For the record: Chargers’ Antonio Gates is destined to be the best tight end to catch touchdowns in NFL history

It’s always been about getting the ball in his hands.

Antonio Gates had a knack for it — getting open and catching it. Seeing it in the air, slicing through the defense to find open space, and using his bulk and strength to create just enough space to go up and grab it.

But the man who’ll soon be the highest-scoring tight end in NFL history wasn’t as interested in catching passes as he was in coming off down screens, stepping back for jumpers or tapping home rebounds.

“He came in, really, as just a basketball player,” said Drew Brees, one of Gates’ first quarterbacks in the NFL. “His transformation into becoming a NFL tight end is amazing.”

The transformation will reach its zenith when Gates catches his next touchdown — the 112^th of his career. It’ll give him one more than Tony Gonzalez, making the Chargers star the most productive tight end in league history.

And, maybe even more amazing, Gates’ transformation from “just a basketball player” to football revolutionary happened when he learned to stop fighting his past and embrace the things that made him different from everyone who had played tight end before him.

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The Antonio Gates story — the bones of it — isn’t a secret. He was a two-sport star in Detroit and chose to attend Michigan State, where he’d play for both Nick Saban (football) and Tom Izzo (basketball). Saban, convinced Gates would someday be a first-round draft pick, didn’t want him to play basketball, so Gates transferred. From Eastern Michigan to a pair of junior colleges, Gates looked for the right fit until he landed at Kent State, where he played basketball for a former Izzo assistant, Stan Heath.

In his first year at Kent State, Gates led his team to the 2002 Elite Eight before losing to the eventual NCAA Tournament runner-up Indiana. Then, as a senior, he averaged 20 points a game, but because he was a 6-foot-4 power forward, his post-graduate options were limited.

Luckily, the scouts remembered he used to play football.

He signed with the Chargers in 2003 as an undrafted free agent, made the team, and in Week 8 hauled in a Doug Flutie pass for his first career touchdown. Fourteen years and 110 touchdown receptions later, Gates is on the cusp of history.

Brees, who threw 23 of those touchdowns to Gates, saw him at his rawest during his rookie season and remembers how he’d drive coaches crazy with his instincts — most of which came from his first love of basketball.

“He said at one point it clicked for him — he was going to play tight end like he played basketball, posting up and the same type of moves. The way he’d get open on the court is the way he’d get open as a tight end,” Brees said. “In the beginning, it was really kind of revolutionary. Nobody was doing that; no one was really teaching that. When he’d do it in practice, he’d get yelled at.

“And, now he’s the standard.”

When Philip Rivers describes it, a huge smile wraps around his face. He mimes like he’s dribbling a basketball and he starts to shake his shoulders, like Allen Iverson getting ready to claim a couple of ankles.

“Everyone runs the same center route,” Rivers said. “He has a way of doing something at the top. It’s almost like a double move. The guy just knew how to get open. He had that raw talent.”

Gates also, for the first time in years, had a physical advantage over his opponents.

Guarding players five and six inches taller than him in basketball, Gates had to use his quickness, smarts and wide body to secure prime position to negate the height he was giving up on a nightly basis. But once he got to the NFL, the power forwards and centers became linebackers and safeties. And suddenly, a weakness became a massive advantage.

“As a basketball player, I was so caught up in being undersized and still wanted to excel. I found that happy medium when I got to the NFL. I was able to find that niche and apply it,” Gates said. “In reality, I’m still bigger than everybody. It allowed me to stay consistent over time. What I’ve never lost is the insecurity of being undersized. I function as an undersized guy, and I’ve had success as an undersized guy.”

Rivers, who claims to have wins over Gates in games of H-O-R-S-E, couldn’t believe what he’d see when the two would play one-on-one. Gates, despite being 260 pounds, could slide left and right in a blink. His hands were everywhere, and once you got caught on his back, you couldn’t escape.

“When you’re on a basketball court, you have to know where you are. Guys are running around everywhere,” Rivers said. “He does a great job of finding guys, hesitating, slowly moving and posting up. He knows where everyone is going.”

It’s part of how Gates is able to carve out a space in the end zone, allowing him to grab a pass like it’s a loose-ball rebound.

“The way I always described the way Gates catches the ball — he attacks it,” Brees said. “He’ll go and get the ball. That’s certainly from his basketball days.”

No one got a better look at that than Rivers, who has tossed 84 touchdown passes to Gates.

As Gates routinely was catching close to 10 touchdowns a season, the Chargers quarterback noticed Gates evolve from “just a basketball player” into a smart, slick football player.

“That’s when it went to a new level for him,” Rivers said. “He started figuring out what defenses were going to do and took it to a whole new level. It wasn’t just physically being better than the guy over him. It was ‘I’m physically probably better, and all the ways they’re going to try and take things away, I understand those.’”

He wasn’t just thinking like a football player. He was starting to feel like one.

Every morning, knees and ankles would ache. Injuries that would’ve kept him off the court now just got taped up.

“When you start dealing with high ankle sprains and having to play with broken ribs, now you’re a football player,” said Gates, now 37. “And, when I wake up, I know I’m a football player.”

He’s not just a football player. He’s an all-time great football player — a single touchdown away from history. The thought gives Rivers chills.

“We see plays from the past years where I just missed him or he got tackled at the one. He should have 125 [touchdowns]. It’ll be exciting,” Rivers said. “I’ve thought about it. I think it helps that we’re starting the season with just one to go. It’ll just happen.

“We’re thinking if he’s out there, he’ll get one.”

dan.woike@latimes.com

Twitter: @DanWoikeSports