David Maurice Robinson (born August 6, 1965(1965-08-06)) is a retired American NBA basketball player, who played center for the San Antonio Spurs for his entire NBA career. Based on his prior service as an officer in the United States Navy, Robinson earned the nickname "The Admiral". He and teammate power forward Tim Duncan were nicknamed "The Twin Towers". Robinson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame along with Michael Jordan, John Stockton, Jerry Sloan, and C. Vivian Stringer[1] on September 11, 2009. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest centers in NBA history.
Robinson is widely considered to be the best basketball player in U.S. Naval Academy history.[3] He chose the jersey number 50 after his idol Ralph Sampson. By the time he took the court in his first basketball game for the Navy Midshipmen men's basketball team, he had grown to 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m), and over the course of his college basketball career he grew to 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m).[4] In Robinson's final two years, he was a consensus All-America and won college basketball's two most prestigious player awards, the Naismith and Wooden Awards as a Naval Academy first classman (senior).After graduating from the Naval Academy, Robinson became a civil engineering officer at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia. The Navy excused him from three years of the normal five years of his military commitment following graduation from the Naval Academy. Nonetheless, Robinson continued to serve in a reserve role with the Navy and was regularly featured in recruiting materials for the service. Despite the nickname "Admiral", Robinson's actual rank upon fulfilling his service commitment was Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Although there was speculation that Robinson might choose not to sign with the Spurs and to become a free agent once his Navy commitment ended,[7][8] Robinson decided in the end to come to San Antonio. Robinson joined the Spurs for the 1989–90 season, and led the Spurs to the greatest single season turnaround in NBA history at the time[9] (a record the Spurs themselves broke in 1997-98, after drafting Tim Duncan, which was then broken by the Boston Celtics in the 2007–08 NBA season). The Spurs went from 21–61[10] in the 1988–89 season to 56–26 in 1989–90, for a remarkable 35 game improvement. They advanced to the second round of the Western Conference playoffs where they lost in seven games to the eventual conference champion Portland Trail Blazers. Following the 1989–90 season, he was unanimously named the NBA rookie of the year, and subsequently Sega produced a game featuring him entitled David Robinson's Supreme Court.
The Spurs made the playoffs seven more seasons in a row, but never advanced further than the Western Conference finals. Robinson also made the 1992 US Olympic Dream Team that won the gold medal in Barcelona. During the 1993–94 season, he became locked in a duel for the NBA scoring title with Shaquille O'Neal, scoring 71 points (breaking George Gervin's single-game franchise record of 63 on the final day of the 1977-78 NBA season) against the Los Angeles Clippers to win it.[11]
Robinson went on to win the MVP trophy in 1995, and in 1996 he was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.[12] Still, from 1991 to 1996, Robinson was thwarted in his quest to claim the one prize that had eluded him: an NBA title. During that span the Spurs were eliminated from the playoffs by the Warriors, Suns (twice), Jazz (twice), and Rockets. The loss against the Rockets was particularly painful for Robinson because it occurred in the Western Conference Finals with Robinson playing head-to-head against his chief rival, Hakeem Olajuwon. By his own admission, Robinson was outplayed by Olajuwon in the series, their only meetings in post-season play.
Early in the 1997 season, Robinson's dreams of becoming a champion seemed to vanish when he was seriously injured. Robinson hurt his back in the preseason. He did return to play, but six games later, suffered a broken foot in a home game against the Miami Heat, and ended up missing the rest of the regular season. As a result of the injury to Robinson and other key players, the Spurs finished the season with a dismal 20–62 record. However, his injury proved to be a blessing in disguise: due to their dismal record in 1997, the Spurs enjoyed the first pick in the next year's NBA draft, and with it they selected Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest University, who was, after a few years, the final key to Robinson's quest for an NBA title.
[edit] Champion
Robinson announced he would retire from basketball after the 2002–03 campaign.
On June 15, 2003, in the finale to Robinson's career, the Spurs sealed another NBA title with an 88–77 victory over the New Jersey Nets in game six of the 2003 NBA Finals. Turning back the clock, Robinson scored 13 points and grabbed 17 rebounds in his final game for the Spurs. He and the year's regular season and NBA Finals MVP Tim Duncan shared Sports Illustrated magazine's 2003 Sportsmen of the Year award.
Robinson averaged 21.1 points per game, 10.7 rebounds per game, 3.0 blocks per game, and 2.5 assists per game over 987 games in his NBA career. Also, he is one of only a very small group of players to have scored over 20,000 career points in the NBA, as well as being one of only four players to have recorded a quadruple-double[9] (with 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, and 10 blocks against the Detroit Pistons on February 17, 1994), and one of the only five players to record more than 70 points in a single game (with 71 points against the Los Angeles Clippers on April 24, 1994), only Elgin Baylor (71 points), Wilt Chamberlain (70, 72, 73×2, 78, 100 points), David Thompson (73 points), and Kobe Bryant (81 points) have scored more than 70 points
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