Leaving on top

Spurs' center hopes to leave game a winner

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- David Robinson is calling it a career at the end of this NBA season. Ideally, for him and the rest of the San Antonio Spurs, that retirement will come 16 playoff victories from now.

So while Michael Jordan, the year's other superstar retiree, now concentrates on shooting par, Robinson works on shooting free throws and short jumpers. The Spurs are the top seed as the Western Conference postseason begins, which means they are in a good position to pack their 7-foot-1 center off to his rocking chair as a champion.

"For me it would be a perfect ending," said Robinson, 37, who spent his entire 14-year pro career in the Alamo City. "I couldn't have written the script for my career ending the way it has now, so for me it would just be like gravy on top of everything."

San Antonio opens its first-round, best-of-seven playoff series Saturday against Phoenix.

Coach Gregg Popovich said Robinson's impending departure, announced last summer, has been on the team's mind ever since.

"The whole season has been bittersweet," said Popovich. "We know he's not going to be there in the future, so the playoffs will be bittersweet in that sense, too."

Robinson's farewell season has featured ceremonies in cities around the league to salute the man known as The Admiral and remember his many accomplishments in the NBA -- most valuable player, scoring champion, defensive player of the year, all-league 10 times and more.

And on the court, younger players still give him respect.

"He may not be as athletic as he was in his prime, but he knows how to make up for that in other ways," said Seattle forward Rashard Lewis, who watched many classic clashes between Robinson and former Rocket center Hakeem Olajuwon while growing up in Houston. "He's one of the toughest big men to play against. He's so physical with his strength inside."

He still looks every bit the muscle-bulging specimen that he was as a rookie out of the Naval Academy in 1989, and at times this season he's run the floor like he did as a kid. But Robinson's years have caught up to him.

Three times he has been relegated to the injured list, for a total of 18 games, with chronic lower back and knee troubles.

Robinson hurt his back at the end of the 2001-02 regular season, and missed most of the playoffs in which the Spurs were eliminated in the second round by the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers. This year, the coaching staff has managed his minutes to make sure he was available for the postseason.

"To me, this is a perfect situation," he said. "I've just enjoyed this whole year because I've been able to rest when I could and I've been able to come out and help the team when I could."

Statistically, that help has been less that in years past -- his per-game averages of 8.5 points, 7.9 rebounds and 26 minutes were all the lowest since he joined the Spurs. Robinson's career averages are 21.1 points and 10.6 rebounds.

But his influence on the team through inspiring words and his upright example remained strong as ever, and that's what he sees as his locker-room legacy.

"In the long run, the only things that really stand out in your life are how you've impacted other people's lives anyway. Nobody cares about your statistics," Robinson said. "I don't care about Oscar Robertson's statistics 30 years ago -- nobody cares. But what kind of a man he was and the kind of impact he had on the game, the impact he had on the future -- that's what I care about."

Well-known is how he took rookie Tim Duncan under his wing in 1997-98, fully aware and accepting that Duncan would soon replace him as the Spurs' go-to guy. That transition occurred the following year, and the Spurs won the NBA championship.

One of his projects this season has been teammate Stephen Jackson, a shooting guard drafted out of high school five years ago but who has labored to find steady work in the NBA. Where others sought to settle the streaky, emotional Jackson as a player, Robinson approached the problem from another angle.

"He needed some spiritual guidance -- he needed to just understand what his life is about," Robinso said. "It's not about all the stuff that kinda goes along with basketball -- going out there and chasing women and chasing money and stuff. ... He's growing tremendously, and he's become a solid contributor to our team on and off the floor."

Jackson, the Spurs' No. 3 scorer at nearly 12 points per game, says Robinson's help has made all the difference in his success.

"David showed me how to put first things first," said the Port Arthur native. "I didn't know how to be a professional in this league, I didn't know how to look at this as a job, I didn't know how to put my family first."

Robinson's family has always been first, and his retirement will give him more time for his wife, Valerie, and three young sons.

He'll also be able to dedicate more of himself to the Carver Academy, a school for disadvantaged kids in San Antonio that he founded and has endowed with more than $9 million of his own money. He also talks about becoming a minister.

"There's a lot of opportunity out there for me, but there's also a lot of things I could be doing that would be wasting my time, too," Robinson said. "I think there's a place that God has for me, and I've got to find it."

 

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