The greatest feet that a professional athlete can bring in their career is to be great in their sport and use that greatness to make a major impact on the lives of those who love seeing them away from their sport. The best example of this was the latest guest on the latest edition of NBATV’s “#NBATogether with Ernie Johnson,” who had an amazing career on the hardwood, which led to him being named a Hall of Famer twice and gave back to the community where he played his entire NBA career, just like he gave back to the country he served before coming to the NBA.
Via video chat, NBA on TNT studio host and lead host of “Inside the NBA” on TNT Ernie Johnson interviewed Hall of Famer, 1995 Kia MVP 10-time All-Star selection, 10-time All-NBA selection and eight time NBA All-Defensive selection David Robinson, who spent his entire 14-year career with the San Antonio Spurs, who he helped lead to two of their five NBA titles in franchise history.
This high level of accomplishment “the Admiral” had individually and what he did for the Spurs was planted in him from an early age.
The 1992 Kia Defensive Player of the Year told Johnson about a story he wrote for “The Player’s Tribune” where he talked about how his grandfather, who grew up in Little Rock, AK in the segregated South of the U.S. in the 1950s worked the same job and for the same people for five decades, without a promotion and how he saved money to purchase a piano.
It was more about just having the funds to purchase a piano but how the piano brought the family together.
That meaning of family and wanting to be better than his circumstances at that time was also true for Robinson’s father Ambrose who was one of nine African American kids asked to attend Central High School, moving from Horace Mann Magnet High School, which Mr. Robinson, Sr. said no to.
“To me, growing up, going to Little Rock and seeing all of my family that was there and seeing the impact it had on my family made me want to change things,” Robinson said. “It made me want to go get my education. And you know, when you can’t go to the best high school in town because your black.”
“There were places where my uncle played and that my grandfather couldn’t go and watch him play. So, that was all a part of my growing up. It was a part of kind of how I understand the world. And that’s why education has been a big focus for me because I know it can change your life. I know it can change your family’s life because it has changed our family’s in just two generations.”
It is something that Robinson and former Goldman Sachs employee Daniel Bassichis has been trying to convince families of what a great education can do for their kids as the founders of the Carver Academy, founded in 2001.
The Carver Academy named for George Washington Carver is a non-profit private school that has provided opportunities for the inner-city kids of the “Alamo City.” The school in 2012 became a public charter school and changed its name to IDEA Carver.
Robinson and Bassichis, a board member of The Carver Academy also partnered to form Admiral Capital Group, a private equity firm where the mission is to make investments in opportunities to provide both financial and social returns. Robinson said that his primary motivation in starting Admiral Capital was to create a way to provide additional financial support for The Caver Academy.
That importance of understanding what a great education meant is what drove Robinson to have success during his academic life graduating from Osbourne Park High School in Manassas, VA in 1983, where he scored an astonishing 1,320 on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
Robinson continued his educational journey attending the U.S. Naval Academy, where he majored in mathematics and played basketball for the Midshipmen, where he chose the jersey No. 50 after his idol Ralph Sampson.
In his collegiate career at Navy, Robinson’s resume consisted of him being named the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year in 1986. A three-time Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Men’s Basketball Player of the Year recipient from 1985-87. Being named the National College Player of the Year and getting selected as a Consensus First-Team All-American in 1987, which follows earning Consensus Second-Team All-American honors in 1986.
In the 1987 NBA Draft, Robinson was selected No. 1 overall by the Spurs after graduating from the Naval Academy, but did not join the Spurs until the 1989-90 NBA season because he had to finish his service commitment where he was a civil engineering officer at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in southeastern Georgia.
Robinson was not present at the then Felt Forum, now the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden in New York, NY for the draft, which was broadcasted on TBS Superstation 33 years ago, hosted by then play-by-play commentator for Turner Sports Bob Neal. There was a piece ran in which a 21-year-old Robinson reflected on how basketball had not taken an immediate hold on his life.
“I’m to the point where I really enjoy it a lot,” Robinson, who was dawning a white dress shirt and black tie, and a sweater with Navy symbol, a capital N said then about the game of basketball. “I spend a lot of my free time doing it. That’s because I’m starting to love the game. But I think I did approach it in the right way. I mean, I wasn’t swamped with basketball right away. So, I gradually learned to like it a little bit more, a little bit more. And now, I’m pretty much consumed with it.”
A big part of Robinson’s success with the Spurs is that he experience with the Navy helped him see the world how current head coach of the now five-time NBA champions Gregg Popovich, a 1970 graduate of the Air Force Falcons sees it.
Robinson said that he and Popovich, who served as an assistant for the Spurs on Hall of Famer Larry Brown’s staff from 1988-92 worked great together from “Day One” because how their backgrounds in going to service academies as collegians shaped in how they approached basketball. The way they handled their individual duties with the Spurs and how they saw their roles in the San Antonio community.
“I like ‘Pop’ like, you know, my commanding general,” Robinson said with a laugh to Johnson about the Spurs former General Manager and Vice President of Basketball Operations. “I respect the job he does. He’s amazing. And I love ‘Pop’ for many different reasons but I see him and Tim [Duncan] and it’s much more of a familial type of relationship, which is a lot of fun to see and you see the different sides of ‘Pop.’”
The dynamic at the start between Robinson and Tim Duncan, the Spurs No. 1 overall pick in the 1997 NBA Draft was he said was a “cooperative” one.
Robinson also said that Duncan when he began with the Spurs was a “humble” guy, who made him feel like he was loud because how quiet of an approach that Duncan had not just as a rookie but for most of his 19-year career in the NBA all with the Spurs.
When it came to his work on the court, Duncan in the words of Robinson at the start of the Wake Forest products career was “incredible” and that playing with him was going to be “fun.”
“I didn’t think he was going to be better than me,” Robinson said with a chuckle about how great Duncan became. “But I certainly thought he was going to be really good.”
“So, I know, it was great. I just wanted to help him. I wanted to teach him as much as I could. I wanted him to find his strength and boy did he. I mean, he came in and within those first two or three years, everybody knew he was going to be a Hall of Fame type player.”
This partnership as teammates was beneficial for both Robinson and Duncan, and the Spurs because in the first seven years of Robinson’s career, the Spurs reached the Western Conference Finals once, which they lost in six games to the eventual back-to-back NBA champion Houston Rockets and fellow Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon, who thoroughly outplayed Robinson in that series.
That season was the tail end of a two-year period in which one of Robinson’s teammates was Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman, who he said to Johnson that he “loved” having as a teammate.
“Truthfully, you know, Dennis, he’s off the wall. I mean, there’s no question,” Robinson said. “Dennis is an unusual character. But a freakish athlete. He loves to play basketball.”
“I mean, he does bring a lot of distractions to the table. There’s no question. And part of that really hurt our team. We weren’t a team that could deal with those type of distractions. The Bulls fortunately were.”
Robinson gave credit to the Bulls and Jordan and Pippen, and head coach Phil Jackson during their second three-peat on how they had the kind of structure to handle the off court and sometimes on court distractions that Rodman brought during his time with the Bulls and the Spurs prior.
In the final seven seasons of Robinson’s career with Duncan alongside him, the Spurs reached the Conference Finals three times, breaking through and winning as mentioned two of the franchise’s five Larry O’Brien trophies in 1999 over the New York Knicks and the then New Jersey, now Brooklyn Nets in 2003 in five and six games respectably.
When Robinson retired after the Spurs second title, the team was now in the hands of Duncan and with the help of future Hall of Famers in Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, and Coach Popovich lead the Spurs to three more titles in 2005 over the Detroit Pistons in seven games; in an four-game sweep over now Los Angeles Lakers four-time Kia MVP LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2007 and the James led Miami Heat in the 2014 Finals in five games.
Along the way, Duncan achieved great individual success that was even better than Robinson being named 1998 Kia Rookie of the Year; Kia MVP in 2002 and 2003; earning Finals MVP three times; 15 All-Star selections; 15-time All-NBA selection, with 10 of those as an First-Team selection; and a 15-time NBA All-Defensive selection.
“When you first come into the league, you want to establish yourself. That’s what you spend your first couple of years doing,” Robinson said. “Once you find out that, ‘Hey, I belong here, and I’m in a pretty good place,’ winning is the only thing that matters.”
“I think for me, seeing Tim come in and knowing that I had real help, which would give us a real chance to win a championship, that was life changing right there.”
Robinson specifically remembers being a part of the 1992 Dream Team that captured Gold in the Summer Olympics in Barcelona that his teammates then in Hall of Famers Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird, and Earvin “Magic” Johnson and head coach in the late Chuck Daly had won titles, and they made fun of the fact that fellow Hall of Famers Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Karl Malone, and Clyde Drexler for not reaching that NBA mountain top.
Thanks to Duncan, Robinson became a part of that elite group at the tail end of his career in 1999 and 2003.
During his time with the Dream Team 28 years ago this summer, while the likes of Jordan, Barkley, “Magic” Johnson and Bird where having late night cigar and card games, Robinson said he would take out his saxophone or keyboard that he brought with him and practicing playing those instruments as he tried to better his all around himself.
The fondest memory of that experience Robinson said was standing being on the medal podium and having their Gold medals placed around their necks and thinking at that moment that it will go down as one of the best moments in the history of the Summer Olympics because this group of NBA players changed game of basketball on an international level. Getting the chance to play with individuals and a coaching staff in Daly and assistant in fellow Hall of Famers Duke University Men’s Basketball Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski and Lenny Wilkens and former NBA head coach P.J. Carlesimo.
This moment Robinson also mentioned that this moment will be one that his kids, which he and his wife of now 29 years Valerie eventually had in sons David Jr., Corey and Justin and their entire family will remember forever.
He did say though that winning a championship does not make you a “better person” or “validate” you. What Robinson did say what winning a title does is “codifies” all the work that you put in.
“You set a goal and it’s an amazing achievement,” Robinson said about winning two NBA titles with the Spurs. “It’s not an easy goal. It’s one of those big hairy audacious goals, right? So, you set that goal, and there’s no guarantee that you’re to get there. But when you do, when you do, there’s only a handful of teams. There’s a handful of individuals that get to stand on that stage when that confetti’s going. It validates that you have worked hard.”
What makes the moment of winning a championship even sweeter is when it is your last moment of your NBA career, which was the case for Robinson back in 2003.
Robinson said before the start of that 2002-03 title season, he had a talk with God about if this was going to be his final NBA season. The end of that conversation had Robinson deciding that this would be his swan song and move on to the second stage of his life.
“I felt like that was a confirmation from the Lord just that it’s, you know, it’s the right thing. It’s the right way to do it,” Robinson said about retiring after the 2002-03 season.
What really made Robinson one of the best big men to ever play on the NBA hardwood was he knew what he was great at. He was a tremendous scorer in the low post. A great rebounder, shot blocker, free throw shooter and jumper shooter from 15 to 20 feet.
In his 14-year NBA career where he played 987 career regular season games and 123 career playoff games, Robinson made a combined 26 of his 110 attempts from three-point range.
When asked by Johnson if he was playing in today’s three-point happy era would he have to rectify his game to adapt to the NBA era of this moment, he said “no” and feels that any player that is 6-foot-10 or taller that is trying to become more of a three-point shooter instead of focusing on being a dominant low post scorer is minimizing how effective they could become.
“If you’re 6-foot-10, 6-foot-11, 7-foot, you’re going to play a longtime and you’re going to make most of your money down there in that post,” Robinson said. “And you’re going to make it rebounding. You’re going to make it defending. And it’s hard to do all that stuff when you’re 25 feet away from the basket.”
Robinson also said that he feels today that teams are more offensively focused as opposed to really being defensively focused compared to the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Spurs teams led by Robinson and even today under Coach Popovich have always believed that their success begins with their focus on the defensive, and that at the offensive end having their wings be the ones that shoot from three-point range most of the time and have the likes of perennial All-Star forward LaMarcus Aldridge do their scoring from the mid-range and in the paint.
“You got to start on the defensive end and then on the offensive end make those guys work man. Punish them” Robinson said. “If you’re bigger and stronger, go punish them down low.”
Going back to the 1988-89 season, the San Antonio Spurs have only missed the playoffs twice. In both of those instances, they managed to get the No. 1 overall pick selecting big man David Robinson first in 1987 and then Tim Duncan a decade later. Those two were the foundational pieces that helped the Spurs be a playoff perennial and then an NBA champion with the arrival of Duncan.
In this era of teams tanking to get better, the Spurs when they had their opportunity to turn things around in the NBA Draft, they struck gold with not just getting the best basketball player but they got the right person with the right frame of mind to build their team around. They brought a level of skill that made the team better on the court and brought an engagement to San Antonians where they became especially iconic off the court.
Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 5/30/2020 8 p.m. edition “#NBATogether With Ernie Johnson: David Robinson and Pascal Siakam;” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_San_Antonio_Spurs_seasons; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Athletic_Association_Men%27s_Basketball_Player_of_the_Year; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_NBA_draft; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Submarine_Base_Kings_Bay; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Arts_and_Science_Magnet_Middle_School; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Popovich; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Olympic_basketball_team; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Duncan; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Robinson.
No comments:
Post a Comment