Victor Wembanyama’s superstar ascent follows a similar arc of Spurs legends David Robinson and Tim Duncan, both of whom were also named SN NBA Players of the Year. This article, ‘Well Worth The Wait‘ by Paul Attner originally appeared as the cover story in the April 23, 1990 issue of The Sporting News.
For someone who grew up playing a number of sports but never was the best at any of them, David Robinson is having a ball as an adult. He is the National Basketball Association’s best rookie, the San Antonio Spurs‘ best player and, most surprising of all to him, one of the three best centers in the league.
And that’s not even counting how well he is being paid — $26 million over eight years — or the fact he is the star of stars in his newly adopted Texas home or that, as his first regular season as a pro draws to an end, he has convinced himself he eventually could be the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.
That’s pretty heady stuff for a guy who once envisioned a life as a scientist or engineer, not as a doctor of dunks and defense, who grew up not particularly liking basketball and who chose a future as a Naval officer with the knowledge of how ludicrous any dreams of him making a living from sports would be.
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Still, there are doubters. The latest are some of his teammates. They’ve been debating all season with him about bowling, of all things. Robinson fancies himself as a pretty nifty man on the lanes, but the Spurs just can’t imagine anyone that tall being able to throw strikes.
After all, there must be something he can’t do well. Wrong.
Robinson told his teammates he once averaged a pretty impressive 180, but they just laughed. So one night in Sacramento, Calif., four of the Spurs went to a bowling establishment and watched as Robinson, after warming up with a 125—”man, were they talking trash after that game”— rolled a 188. And that’s without being able to use his thumb for control. He didn’t have his custom- drilled ball, and his hands are so big he could only fit his fingers in the holes, leaving his thumb on its own, which is not the preferred method to throw strikes.
“Now they want a rematch,” Robinson said. “I told ’em, ‘When are you going to learn?”
The Spurs should have known better. Robinson has been on a roll all season, playing better than he, his coach or his teammates could have expected.
In what has been a significant year for the NBA, Robinson has been its brightest development. Consider the timing.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retires just as the Detroit Pistons, with Bill Laimbeer as their center, win the NBA title. The NBA looks around and sees that a game once dominated by big men has been taken over by power forwards, all-purpose players and an overwhelming force named Michael Jordan. Its champion features a pivotman whose strengths are an outside jump shot and an all-star whine.
MORE: Why Victor Wembanyama is SN’s Player of the Year
Whatever happened to the concept of building a title team around a dominant big man? For that matter, whatever happened to dominating centers, period?
Then along come the San Antonio Spurs’ David Robinson.
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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: APRIL 23, 1990
Three years ago, the Spurs drafted Robinson, the 1987 college player of the year at the Naval Academy; paid him enormous money, although he had to sit out two years while fulfilling his military obligation, then rebuilt the rest of the team to complement his talents. The Spurs were dying in San Antonio, and if the strategy flopped, the team almost certainly was destined to be buried, then moved, casket and all.
It’s important to remember that Robinson entered the NBA surrounded by serious doubts about his future. Those question marks about his intensity and whether he was overrated stemmed from the failure of both the U.S. Pan American and Olympic basketball teams to win gold medals with him at center. Had the Spurs paid far too much to sign him and gambled far too much on his ability?
“I knew that I would play well (in the NBA), but I also knew there was a lot of bad mouthing going on about me,” Robinson said. “And I had to sit around for two years listening to it and not being able to do anything about it.”
But he has done something about it this season, when the only trash talk he has heard has concerned his bowling average. Robinson has distanced himself from all those maybes and taken firm footing alongside Houston’s Akeem Olajuwon and New York’s Pat Ewing among the NBA’s premier centers.
Through April 11, Robinson ranked 10th in scoring (24.4), second in rebounding (11.9), third in blocked shots (3.9) and 13th in field-goal percentage (.533). If he doesn’t finish among the top six in the MVP voting, it will be a crime.
Just as important, the Spurs can’t stop smiling. Just look what Robinson has meant to them. Attendance at the HemisFair, which had dwindled to an average of 8,462 the year he signed—third- lowest in the league and the second-worst figure in the Spurs’ NBA history—is a team-record 14,595 (92 percent of capacity) this season. The Spurs already have had a record 14 sellouts, outshining those fine George Gervin-led playoff squads of the early ’80s. Think Robinson isn’t earning his megabucks at the box office?
Despite their considerable youth — the Spurs start two rookies and two second-year players and have just two players left from last season’s roster — the Spurs’ 51-26 record through April 12 put them within reach of the NBA record for the greatest turnaround in a year. The Celtics, helped by rookie Larry Bird, improved 32 games from the 1978-79 season to the 1979-80 campaign. The Spurs were 21-61 last season, the third-worst record in the league.
What’s more, they have a shot at breaking the team record of 53 wins, set in the 1982-83 season, and they’re challenging Utah for the Midwest Division lead.
I’m sure people are surprised I’ve done so much so fast. But it counts more that the team also has played well.
— David Robinson
So maybe the idea of building around a dominating big man isn’t dead yet.
“We’re only going to get better,” said Coach Larry Brown, who also could have been talking about Robinson. “We’re still playing game to game, trying to improve every night. We haven’t had the luxury of relying on experience.”
Maybe to prove his point, Brown approved a deal in February that sent veteran guard Maurice Cheeks to New York for youngster Rod Strickland, a move geared strictly to the future. If everything that Robinson and the Spurs have done shocks you, don’t feel alone. It took Robinson until the All-Star Game to start thinking bigger.
It was also about that time that Brown, a consummate worrier and screamer, began increasing the volume of his criticism toward Robinson. “At first he didn’t yell that much at me,” said Robinson, a bemused smile on his face. “Then, I think he realized I was doing better than he had anticipated, and he really started to get on me. I’d get 12 rebounds; he’d want 15. I’d block five shots; he’d want seven. But he should push me. I can get a lot better. We both know that.”
Robinson had heard all the talk about the drudgery of the long season — and about how Brown’s barbs would wear on him — but he refused to let anything reduce his enjoyment. At a time when most pro athletes don’t seem to like what they are doing very much — they’ll tell you, they are in a business, not a game — Robinson is truly different.
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He’s still a little kid who loves his new profession. He just doesn’t always show it, at least on the court. Robinson’s playing demeanor features an occasional smile and a lot of Mr. Cool. As Jordan has demonstrated, it isn’t a sin to look like you’re having fun. The irony is, Robinson is every bit as intelligent and personable off the court as Jordan. How lucky can the NBA get?
The league already was blessed with two extraordinary spokesmen and media darlings in Jordan and Magic Johnson. Now here comes Robinson, who is their equal as a world-class talker. Plus, he can play.
When the postgame crush of media and autograph seekers has been overwhelming, Brown has asked Robinson if he wants the Spurs to exercise more control. But the answer has been no. Robinson is comfortable in these situations, relying on his outgoing nature and easy smile.
“He’s got time for everyone,” Brown said. “What’s terrific is that he makes people feel good.”
Remarkably, Robinson has arrived at this highly acclaimed position almost by accident. He didn’t go to basketball camps as a youth, didn’t spend hours in the gym perfecting his skills and didn’t have to fend off hundreds of college recruiters. When you play basketball in the eighth grade, quit in the ninth because you don’t particularly like it, then suit up again as a high school senior only because your coach spots a 6-7 guy and sorely needs a backup center, it isn’t difficult to keep basketball in perspective.
Besides, his real passions were mathematics and computers. He dabbled in all kinds of sports, from bowling — take note, Spurs — to tennis to baseball (he was a pitcher), but he was never the MVP in any of them. He was just a normal youngster growing up as a Navy brat (his father is a retired chief petty officer) in a truly American lifestyle, letting athletics entertain him but never dreaming of being the next Bill Russell. Since a career in engineering sounded attractive, he applied to the Naval Academy.
Even when a few local colleges — he was living in Northern Virginia — scouted him his senior season and talked with him about playing for them, he wasn’t interested. Why kid yourself about a future in basketball and pass up a chance for a great education and ironclad job security after graduation?
The Navy coaches knew about him, of course. But as a freshman, basketball proved more of a distraction from his studies than enjoyment. Besides, he disliked practice, and the boredom of repetition failed to keep his mind from wandering.
Malcolm Emmons-Imagn Images
As a youngster, he’d go with his mother to the grocery store and, just for the fun of it, add up the cost of everything in her cart before she entered the checkout line. Robinson never has been one to sit around and daydream. Back then, he would have preferred rebuilding a computer over improving his foul shooting.
“My father really is the only one who saw the player I could become,” Robinson said. “Even before I went to Navy, he said to me, ‘You sure you want that five-year commitment?’ But my mother wanted me to go there, and I couldn’t see myself as a pro basketball player. So I went.”
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Robinson grew six inches during his tenure at Annapolis, and his natural athletic gifts helped him improve immeasurably. He found the more effort he put into it, the better he got.
He became intrigued by the game, so much so that by the end of his sophomore season he was a budding star even if he bothered former Middies coach Paul Evans by not warming up before games. He was doing the same thing this year until Brown asked him to participate in layup drills “so the fans would get their money’s worth.”
Robinson faced the biggest dilemma of his athletic career. Should he transfer and avoid his five-year postgraduate service commitment? If he stayed, Navy officials had hinted his commitment probably would be reduced. But he still would be taking a risk. If required to serve all five years, his NBA value would be considerably diminished. Amazingly, Robinson was so unconvinced about his basketball potential — and enjoyed life at Annapolis so much — that he chose to stay.
“I don’t regret the decision because it turned out well for me,” he said. “When you don’t even like basketball as a freshman, it’s hard to conceive of yourself playing it full-time. I wanted a degree; that was important. Besides, being at Navy was a blessing. I had no pressure until I was ready for it. By the time expectations were high about my ability, I was a senior, and I was ready for teams like Syracuse, Georgetown and Michigan. If we had played those caliber teams earlier in my career, it might have hurt me.”
He has no unkind thoughts about the two years he sat out, working as a civil engineer at a Naval base in Georgia. Of course, he was being paid by the Spurs, making him the highest-paid lieutenant junior grade in Naval history. But he says the time allowed him to mature, to find out what it was like to be on his own. While fellow rookie Sean Elliott struggled most of the season, Robinson advised his teammate to be patient, that maturity works wonders.
“I absolutely learned to be patient, not to fight things and keep my stress level down,” Robinson said. “It’s helped me greatly this season. I’m mellow, and I refuse to let things bother me. Larry’s yelling — now that could get to me if I let it. But people yelled at me for years in the Navy, so why get uptight about it? I just shift through what he says and take out the positive. I know he just wants me to be better.”
Armed with degrees in math and computer science, Robinson finally has focused his considerable intellectual abilities on basketball. He set only one goal for himself this season (double figures in rebounds, which he’ll meet), then sat back and waited. He knew he could score, but what about his post defense, his passing and, for the first time in his life, nightly contests against people his size?
The scholar in Robinson would give himself passing grades in all categories — and high marks in a few. Although weightlifting has built up his upper body, he still weighs less than most opposing centers. But he uses his quickness to neutralize their bulk and receives enough foul calls to trail only Utah’s Karl Malone in free throw attempts.
“My father really is the only one who saw the player I could become. Even before I went to Navy, he said to me, ‘You sure you want that five-year commitment?’ But my mother wanted me to go there, and I couldn’t see myself as a pro basketball player. So I went.”
– David Robinson
His shot-blocking ability has been compared to that of another left-hander, Russell, which is pretty heady company. Robinson at least feels he has established himself as a presence in the middle. But he’s nowhere near the rebounder he wants to be, and his passing needs work.
He’s averaging 24 points a game despite the Spurs’ motion offense, which doesn’t have a No. 1 option. He has been unhappy with his jumper, and Brown says Robinson “needs a money shot, a shot that he knows he can go to and score with every time, like Kareem’s sky hook or Ewing’s turnaround jumper.”
Brown would love for Robinson to rely on a jump hook he has developed since the beginning of the season. Robinson thinks a baseline turnaround jumper may be the answer. Maybe he’ll wind up with two killer weapons. His quickness already is a killer. In an era when big men such as Ewing relish running the floor, no one does it better than Robinson. You can’t teach quickness, and that’s what ultimately has allowed him to compete with more experienced centers, like Ewing and Olajuwon, as a rookie.
Robinson-knows enough about basketball history to understand that it sometimes has taken two or three seasons for many big men to make an impact.
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“I’m sure people are surprised I’ve done as much so fast,” he said. “But it counts more that the team also has played well. I think any player would tell you that individual accomplishments help your ego, but if you don’t win, it makes for a very, very long season.”
Heed also this warning from Brown: “In terms of basketball learning, David is still a kid. He hasn’t been exposed to as much as the people he’s playing against. Most of them have been thinking basketball for years. David is just getting that I way now. Wait until he understands the game better.”
Robinson already understands that he has MVP-caliber ability, which wouldn’t have entered his mind in October. The most persuasive evidence has come in his matchups with Ewing and Olajuwon. He hasn’t shut either of them down, but they haven’t stopped him, either. Ewing and Robinson even got into a wrestling match of sorts during their second meeting. The more Robinson has proved he is their equal, the more his confidence has grown.
“What I’ve noticed about both of them is that they are selfish,” Robinson said, “and I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion. You have s to want the ball, and you have to want to score and you have to s think you are the one guy who can do it. Akeem is the best rebounder in the league — I hate to admit that I — because he wants every rebound. I’ll get more selfish too, with time, because I want to be the best. Everything I’ve ever done, when I saw I could be on top, I’ve gone after it. Now it’s happening in basketball.”
But Brown, that constant voice in his ear, tells Robinson something else, too. “Got to be more intense every night,” he keeps reminding Robinson, who rolls his eyes at the thought.
“The most difficult thing about this game is to get up every night,” Robinson said. “I know I am a much better competitor now than I used to be. But I find myself getting more excited against the better teams. Sure, I’m spaced out sometimes, but I don’t think my intensity level is that inconsistent. Not the way I love what I’m doing. I get up every morning and thank God for having the best job in the world.”
But Robinson’s passions extend far beyond basketball. Everywhere he goes on the road, he totes a musical keyboard, so he can perfect his self-taught playing skills, an interest that musically minded teammate Terry Cummings has encouraged. Robinson hopes to write songs someday, even if his maiden efforts have been, in his opinion, “really weak.”
His other interests include logic puzzles — he likes to do the most difficult ones. And, in the off-season, he intends to polish his golf game. He’s already good enough to shoot in the mid-80s despite never having had a lesson.
Right after Robinson signed his Spurs contract, he and his dad were at the home of then-owner Angelo Drossos, ready to watch one of those big-screen televisions. But the set malfunctioned. Here was the NBA’s latest millionaire on his hands and knees with his father, trying to repair the set. They got it to work, too, and didn’t even charge Drossos for a service call.
Now, Robinson owns a San Antonio condominium and a house, which he bought so his parents would have a place to stay during visits. He plans to remain in the city year-round, lured by its low- key atmosphere. People actually leave him alone in San Antonio restaurants.
“What’s happened is that, in one season, this has become David’s team,” Brown said. “He is its heart and soul. I’m not sure he realizes that yet, because everything has happened so quickly. But the more he grows into that role, the better he’ll become and the better the team will become.”
When and if that happens, the Lakers and Pistons definitely will have to make room for the new kids on the block — and for a dominant big man.