Out of Navy, a Job Awaited

Lots of guys have to choose between becoming a professional athlete and a shoe clerk or short-order cook for a living.

Some have to decide between a career in sports or joining the Navy.

That’s the dilemma David Robinson faced. He had to make up his mind between being a basketball player--or an admiral.

He had to make a decision whether to lead the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA--or a task force in the Persian Gulf.

It’s easy to opt for basketball when that’s all you can do. When the options are to shoot baskets for a living--or fill them with tomatoes.

But what if you’re a qualified civil engineer? What if you can build bridges?

It’s all very well to go down in history with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain. But what’s wrong with going down with John Paul Jones, Adm. Dewey or Adm. Farragut? How bad can it be to be mentioned in the same breath with Commodore Perry?

You can tell David Robinson is special if you just go down to the locker room after a San Antonio Spurs’ game.

You see, the average NBA player dresses after a game in a fuchsia jumpsuit with reptile loafers and no socks, maybe a gold chain or two. Mr. Robinson wears a three-piece suit, a power tie, bench-made English shoes and a shirt with a monogram on it. You’re surprised he doesn’t have a bowler hat and a furled umbrella. You can’t tell whether he’s from British Intelligence or the Bank of America.

You really have to resist the temptation to call him “Sir.” Or salute. You expect him to look at you sternly and say “Square that cap, son!”

He’s somewhere between seven and eight feet tall and weighs in the neighborhood of a 10th of a ton. He looks like the kind of guy you’d call “Mister,” at least for the first hour or so. I guess in the Navy they didn’t know whether to hang flags on him or to land planes on him. He looks like a flight deck with No. 50 on it. He’s the biggest thing the Navy has seen this side of the USS Ticonderoga.

So what’s he doing in shorts with a basketball in his hand, looking to dunk it over Vlade Divac? Why isn’t he walking around with gold braid on his hat, being piped aboard his flagship?

Or better yet, what was a world-class, $2-million basketball player doing at the Naval Academy in the first place? Basketball players go to UNLV, not service academies. I mean, what do they need with logarithms? Slide rules? Computing the trajectories of shells over horizons?

It’s hard to believe but David Robinson, who has a chance to be one of the five best who ever played the game, was just a so-so basketball player in high school. He was probably a better baseball player, he says. First of all, he was only 6-4 or 6-5. He only made the team one year. The scouts weren’t camped on his doorstep.

He chose Annapolis not to play basketball but to pursue engineering. At Navy, the best you can hope for in hoops is to beat Army once in a while and keep the fleet happy. You don’t look forward to the Final Four every year. You’re not North Carolina.

Robinson picked the academy for a military career not a sports career. His Dad was a career petty officer in the Navy, and this seemed a logical extension to the American dream.

He had no way of knowing he would grow seven inches in his academy career. In fact, if the Navy had known it, it might not have let him in. The service ceiling was 6-6 at the time with a waiver to 6-8 only for a certain percentage of applicants.

“I was looking forward to a career at sea,” he says.

Instead, he’s in San Antonio, which is about as landlocked as you can get.

He was not only the best basketball player in Navy’s history, he was the best college player in the country his senior year. He didn’t lead the Navy into the Final Four, but he got the Middies into the tournament where, despite his 50 points, they were eliminated by Michigan in the first round.

He had every team in the NBA thirsting for him. Unfortunately, he also had the fleet. His graduation posed a neat problem for the Defense Department, to say nothing of the White House. Should he be in the pivot in a pro lineup--or on a bridge in a task force?

If David Robinson had known he was going to become one of the world’s best basketball players, he might not have chosen the Naval Academy in the first place. On the other hand, if he, God forbid, should suffer a crippling injury, he has all those years of calculus, trigonometry, astronomy, navigation and whatever else it takes to stop a battleship from running on a sandbar to fall back on.

He had to put in his two years on a deck before he could join the Spurs, who won him in the lottery. But he had no trouble becoming the league’s rookie of the year. He came within seven of bucketing 2,000 points, made six of every eight free throws, had 20 or more points 62 times and 30 or more points 30 times.

Playing with an injury-crippled team this season--the Spurs lost their point guard--he has the Spurs almost atop their division, only one-half game behind Utah. He leads the league in rebounds, is averaging 25.6 points a game and is running neck and neck with the Alamo as a recognizable historic edifice in San Antonio.

Lieutenant (j.g.) David Maurice Robinson may well be the first Annapolis grad ever to make the NBA’s Hall of Fame.

Of course, no NBA grad has made the White House. And if Bill Bradley doesn’t beat him to it, Lt. Robinson may one day score, as usual, the double.