Kansas City, Kan. ? Brad Daugherty has heard it countless times: What’s a former basketball star doing analyzing NASCAR? Oh well, at least it beats, “How’s the weather up there?”

Barely.

“I’ve always been around racing,” Daugherty said from a chair in the Media Center at Kansas Speedway, where he’s spending the weekend as part of ESPN’s coverage of Sunday’s Price Chopper 400. “I know that freaks people out. Here’s this 7-foot-tall, African-American, All-American pro basketball player who’s a race nut. A lot of people just can’t put me in that picture.”

Daugherty responds as he does to everyone, with a smile and a conversation. That personality and his innocent looks belied his physical style of play in eight seasons with the Cleveland Cavs. He was an All-Star five times during a career cut short by back woes. Some called him soft, which I always found the biggest mischaracterization in professional sports, aside from the one that said Stephon Marbury was a good NBA player because of his numbers.

“The old adage comes in, and they take kindness for weakness,” Daugherty said.

Nobody ever called The King, Richard Petty, weak, and Daugherty learned at a young age Petty was plenty kind.

“I go back a long way with Richard,” Daugherty said. “Even before Richard, Jack Ingram, Sam Ard. I grew up in a little town of Black Mountain, N.C., 10 miles east of Asheville. We had a local short track in our hometown. Richard and those guys came to race there. Jack Ingram lived there. He was an icon. I could go out to my local diner, and those guys would be there. Then I could go to the racetrack and see these guys transform into just unbelievable gladiators.”

When Daugherty talks basketball, he’s into it. When he talks racing, he’s way, way, way into it.

“If you can ever go to a live event, do it,” he said. “You stand there and watch these guys go by 200 mph, and they’re a foot apart. Being just a good old red-blooded American kid, there’s nothing else like that. It really makes the hair on your arms stand up. You throw in the smell of the fuel burning, the rubber burning, the sheer noise, the vibrance of the color, the violence of the sport, the aggressive nature of the car, the attitude. It blows you away. It’s sensory overload.”

Not many NBA players shared his passion, but former Cavs teammate Larry Nance, a drag racer, did.

“After practice, we’d go over to his garage and work on his cars all the time,” Daugherty said. “We always had cuts or burns or nicks on us.”

Daugherty’s former North Carolina teammate Kenny Smith, from Queens, N.Y., did not get it. They spent a month at each other’s hometowns. Watching Daugherty and friends work on cars, Smith asked why all cars weren’t set up exactly the same. After hearing his friend’s answer, Smith said: “Stupid. Makes no sense. It’s a waste of gas.”

That proves point guards, the ones who decide where the ball goes for shots, can say whatever they want to big men.