Long before Tim Duncan(notes), the four NBA championships in nine years and Tony & Eva, there was David Robinson.
When he first swung by the San Antonio Spurs locker room to say hello, all he got were scowls.
“Most people felt like, ‘Who is this guy who thinks he’s going to save our team?”’ Robinson recalled. “I think it was more of a contempt than anything else. Plus, I think they kind of saw me as a goody-two shoes.”
From Saintly Savior to Hall of Famer. That’s The Admiral—a 7-1 Navy officer brought to rescue a franchise that seemed one good offer away from packing up and leaving town.
On Friday, Robinson will take part in the enshrinement ceremony, six years after he retired with practically an entire city still feeling indebted.
Former Spurs general manager Bob Bass practically jumped from his seat upon winning the No.1 draft pick in 1987. Red McCombs, the former Spurs owner and San Antonio business baron, literally banked his money on Robinson changing everything.
“I wouldn’t have bought the team back if it wasn’t for David,” McCombs said.
Robinson enters the Hall of Fame plenty decorated. Two NBA championships. A landslide MVP award in 1995. Ten All-Star nods. And the NBA even renamed its community assist award for Robinson, who has given $11 million to his San Antonio private school, The Carver Academy.
The 44-year-old will be overshadowed on a weekend belonging to Michael Jordan. John Stockton, another Hall inductee, will be feted as the NBA’s assist king. Rounding out the Hall’s NBA class this year is Jerry Sloan, who has set a record for coaching longevity in Utah.
Robinson holds no major records. He knows he won’t even go down as the greatest Spurs player; the prodigious Duncan already was wresting that distinction away when Robinson retired in 2003.
In San Antonio, his legacy to many will be having kept the Spurs in the nation’s seventh-largest city.
“I don’t want to belittle David the basketball player,” said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, a longtime San Antonio politician who was the city’s mayor in the early 1990s. “But what David did for this city was incredible.”
In a city now spoiled by success—the Spurs are the NBA’s winningest team this decade—San Antonio without the Spurs is a strange alternate reality.
Robinson came to the city at a time when, according to McCombs, “we were really in a low spot and needed something.”
The Spurs hadn’t had a winning season in six years. Attendance wilted. The city was starving for a superstar ever since George Gervin left town in 1985. (Gervin, the only other Spurs player in the Hall, and former coach Larry Brown will present Robinson.)
But once Robinson arrived in San Antonio—the Spurs had to wait two years so Robinson could fulfill a two-year hitch in the Navy—everyone paid attention.
“Imagine him as a young man walking in the gym and doing a handstand from one end to the other at 7-1,” said Spurs Gregg Popovich, who was then an assistant under Brown. “It took one practice and everybody knew that this was a different deal. That’s when the Spurs started winning again.”
Robinson averaged better than 24 points and 10 rebounds as a rookie, leading the Spurs to the biggest single-season turnaround in NBA history. About the only fan Robinson didn’t win over in San Antonio was a high school senior on the city’s northeast side who felt slighted when he asked for an autograph. Shaquille O’Neal(notes) would see Robinson again soon enough.
After the Hall ceremony, Robinson will continue a quiet retirement in San Antonio. He’ll stay focused on expanding his Carver Academy and raising his sons. And from his usual second row seat at the AT&T Center, he’ll watch the Spurs play—as winners.
“Looking back on it now, and seeing where we’ve come from all those many years ago, I’m very, very happy and very proud,” Robinson said. “I can’t imagine this team not being here. “
– By PAUL J. WEBER l AP