He Now Can Show a Big Bite : Glenn Robinson Didn’t Take Long to Make an Impact

It’s a Big Dog’s life . . .

Another town, another snippy headline of the “Big Dog, Big Bucks, Big Bust” variety. Glenn Robinson, the puppy in question, has begun putting up big numbers nightly, but the world loves its little jokes.

Everywhere he goes, the opposition double-teams him as if he were already the second coming of Larry Bird, instead of a rookie who doesn’t even know all the Milwaukee Bucks’ plays yet. The press wants to ask him all the same questions again: What about that holdout for a $100-million contract? Can you beat out Grant Hill for rookie of the year? How’s the adjustment going?

“It’s not hard,” he says in his usual half-whisper.

“Everybody’s asking me how I’m adjusting, like I’m playing very badly. Is that what’s going on? I think I’m playing good. I think I’m adjusting well.”

For Robinson, a large canine on a basketball floor but a deer in the headlights of fame, this is a rare moment in which he actually betrays something of himself.

Even if he never reads the papers, he’s aware of the buzz: He’s a disappointment, they should have drafted Hill, this is the Portland-passes-Michael-Jordan-for-Sam-Bowie thing all over again.

Hill, the Detroit Pistons’ practically perfect young forward, might be the front-runner for rookie of the year, with a game so sound and so spectacular and a personality so appealing as to make him uncatchable, but the Big Dog, who makes his first trip to Los Angeles as a pro to face the 0-16 Clippers tonight, has joined the hunt.

Robinson has put together four consecutive 20-point games. He scored 31 on Tuesday night at Sacramento. Before that, he had scored 21 against Cleveland, 24 against Seattle and 25 against Portland and was the Bucks’ second-leading scorer at 16.9 points per game.

And he’s only warming up.

He’s not even in shape yet. In games at Seattle and Portland over the weekend, his point totals were 18-17 in the first halves, 6-8 in the second. Coach Mike Dunleavy says Robinson is about where he would have been halfway through training camp.

“Coaches say it, everybody nods their head, but people don’t really know what you mean,” Portland Coach P.J. Carlesimo said.

“Veteran players, when they miss training camp or segments of the preseason, it affects them. For a rookie to miss that and then just to be thrown in--I don’t think he’s really ever going to catch up this year.

“I’m not saying he’s not going to play great, but you can’t go back and put that in, the daily routine and the explaining. To learn on the fly--they’re doing it right, they’re letting him play.

“I’m glad he’s not going to catch up. It’s unbelievable to miss all that and just to be thrust into it and to be playing as well as he’s playing at such an early date.

“He’s gonna be a very special player, there’s no question about that. He’s already special.”

*

He made himself special.

As a kid in poverty-wracked Gary, Ind., murder capital of the nation, Robinson was anything but a natural. As a seventh-grader, he was too afraid to go out for the team.

“I had two fat little managers, a pair of twins, who used to outplay him when he was in the fourth or fifth grade,” Robinson’s high school coach, Ron Heflin, told Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman.

“He wasn’t very good. People don’t understand how hard that kid worked. He hasn’t always been a polished ballplayer.”

The work Robinson put in shows in his assortment of moves and feints, a repertoire worthy of a 10-year pro: up-fakes, step-throughs, step-backs, jump-stops.

He had it all as a sophomore at Purdue, after low test scores forced him to sit out his freshman season. Players who sit out their freshman seasons customarily struggle, but Robinson was so far ahead of the field it couldn’t touch him. The students at archrival Indiana might chant “S-A-T!” but Robinson torched all of Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers, forcing the high priest of man-to-man into a hated zone defense.

After one season at Purdue, Robinson had blown away the pros. Jerry West said if he came out, he’d go No. 1--ahead of Chris Webber, Penny Hardaway and Shawn Bradley.

Not quite yet, guys.

An urban version of Bird, the self-described “hick from French Lick,” Robinson chose Purdue because it was close to home, not even bothering to take a recruiting trip to see the IU campus in faraway (200 miles) Bloomington. In two years, he had just grown accustomed to West Lafayette and wasn’t ready for the fast lane.

He returned to Purdue, became college player of the year, rolled through the NCAA tournament with the kind of numbers it hadn’t seen since Bird and, finally, turned pro.

Fame and riches awaited. The riches would come in handy, but the fame? Well, he’d deal with it as best he could.

*

Now to pick up his $100 million.

Money for top picks had been zooming out of sight, from Larry Johnson’s $20-million deal in 1991 to Shaquille O’Neal’s $49 million in 1992 to Chris Webber’s $75 million in 1993. There was speculation that Robinson could be the first $100-million man.

This was nonsense, of course.

The Golden State Warriors, limited by the salary cap to paying Webber $1.8 million his first season, had given him a 15-year deal, intending to rewrite it this season. Webber’s $5-million average was less than Shaq’s $7 million.

Robinson’s agent, Charles Tucker, went for $100 million, anyway.

Tucker had represented Magic Johnson but lost his marquee client when Johnson noticed Michael Jordan reaping endorsement bonanzas he hadn’t even sniffed.

Perhaps to show his new marquee client he could deliver, Tucker stuck to his guns.

By the time camp opened, the Bucks were up to $68 million but vowing to go no higher. Sen. Herb Kohl, the team owner, made his famous statement: He’d take the $100-million contract and give Robinson the franchise.

Tucker kept his client out until the start of the season and then caved in, taking the $68 million they could have had a month before.

For good measure, Tucker threw in a suggestion that criticism of their bargaining posture was racially motivated, even if no other player in any other U.S. sport--rookie or veteran, black or white--had a $100-million deal.

So the Big Dog joined the NBA with a little bad press, on legs that weren’t in shape.

“That was something I had to do,” Robinson says. “I would have liked to have been in training camp, but I’m happy with the outcome. I think I’m going to do well. I think I can catch up.

“The press--I mean, the press is going to be the press. Everybody put it on me to be bad. They didn’t look at the other side. I think it was a two-way thing. That’s the way it goes.

“I really don’t even read the press. I really don’t worry about that. I mean, I’ve been out playing. I just play ball. I treat playing ball just like I’ve been doing since I was a little kid. I didn’t read the papers then, so why read them now?”

If someone declares war on the United States, they’ll break into ESPN to mention it. What else does one need to know?

Robinson is shy in private too, but likable. Buck players say he’s looser around them and has a sense of humor.

“That part of it has been--thank God--good,” Dunleavy says. “He’s a quiet kid. He works hard. He wants to learn. He wants to get better.

“The thing to me that was most amazing, the way he came in with our players, he could have been with a P.R. firm or with Magic Johnson for two months. He couldn’t have come in and handled it any better. Our guys truly love him. He’s impossible not to like.

“He comes in, does all the things rookies are supposed to do. I mean, the way rookies come in now, you hear the stories--’Here’s my check’--that is a major, major plus for us, that he wants to learn, he works hard. To me, it’s just a matter of time.”

Not that much time, either.

There’s nothing shy about Robinson on a basketball court. Out there, he’s a hungry Dog and everyone else is the mailman.