Baaaad Dog!

Robinson, Hawks shouldn't ignore troubled past

Watching Glenn Robinson turn away his eyes and go tight-lipped as he was asked about a domestic fracas this summer, made me wonder if the Atlanta Hawks aren’t a tad worried about history repeating itself.

Lest we forget, the Hawks got toasted when they took a futile flier on bad-boy J. R. Rider a few years back. So with careers and jobs on the line this season, you wonder if the Atlanta brass is again so desperate as to gamble on the All-Star scorer nicknamed "Big Dog" and his tainted image.

Or maybe this is what you put up with running a NBA club these days? We’ve got all-everything guard Allen Iverson throwing his wife out of the house in a bizarre scene up in Philly this summer, though all charges eventually were dropped. We’ve got Chris Webber charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and lying to a federal grand jury. The former University of Michigan star is headed to trial early next year after pleading innocent to the charges.

And when camp opened this week for the New York Knicks, Latrell Sprewell was absent with a mysterious broken hand -- which he failed to previously disclose to the team medical staff -- while teammate Kurt Thomas was in court facing domestic assault charges. Thomas remains free on $1,000 bail and won’t enter a plea until a hearing later this month.

Robinson also had a day in court Monday, quietly slipping off to Chicago before joining his new club for media day. Nothing was resolved in the case, in which Robinson has entered a not-guilty plea. He is set for a Nov. 18 appearance (the Hawks play Toronto that night) still facing charges of illegal possession of a firearm, domestic battery and assault -- all misdemeanors and punishable by up to a year in prison.

Chances of Big Dog doing jail time are slim, though, and that was a factor in the Hawks acquiring him from the Milwaukee Bucks in August. That and assurances from NBA headquarters, it turns out, that charges weren’t likely to cost him a suspension.

That’s well and good, but it seems there may be more to worry about as the season progresses than Robinson’s defensive lapses on the basketball court.

First off, according to court documents, Robinson showed up "very intoxicated" at the door of his ex-fiancee’s suburban Chicago house last July 20, screaming, "I want to see my daughter." It was about 3:30 in the morning. Eventually, Jonta French let him in, but according to the police report, she would get knocked around in an ensuing struggle and suffer bruises on her thigh, hips and buttocks.

Robinson is described as frantically searching for a Glock semi-automatic pistol he had brought to the house a week or so before. French had hidden the gun and he never found it, but French apparently also told police that Robinson said that he was "ready to die and we’re both going to die."

Hello, anybody listening?

"Yeah, that was really upsetting to us," says Pete Babcock, the Hawks general manager. "What was said or wasn’t said, we’re not sure. I don’t think anybody knows other than Glenn and the lady involved."

Upsetting? If there’s even a kernel of truth to the lady’s story -- and it’ll be interesting to see if Ms. French testifies against the father of her daughter -- the Hawks are riverboat gamblers for associating with this character. It doesn’t matter if they picked up a 20-point scorer for a song.

Babcock, as principled a guy as you’ll find in sports, is careful to say he doesn’t condone what Robinson is alleged to have done, but acknowledges the Hawks were influenced by the fact that he accepted responsibility. It ultimately came down to a judgment call. And in the end, Babcock could live with what he heard from the team’s legal folks and security people, the league office and the Bucks.

"We were able to find out what was going on behind the scenes," Babcock contends. "In Glenn’s case, a story came out that there was a weapons charge in this whole thing. And there is none."

Well, not quite. Police did find a 9mm pistol in the house, and Robinson was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm.

"Whether it is right or wrong, our legal people said it was just a misdemeanor so it is like having an expired driver’s license," Babcock says. "He owned the house, so she told the police there was a gun in the house. And there are two different stories on whether he was trying to find it. But he wasn’t being charged with possession of a gun, threatening with a gun. Police found the gun. It wasn’t registered or whatever. It is a misdemeanor."

Great, everything is cool, a misdemeanor won’t cut into Big Dog’s playing time. Yet the visions of a drunken, 6-foot-7 man terrorizing a woman in the wee hours, with an innocent child asleep in a nearby room, is enough to make the blood boil. And it shouldn’t be simply wiped away because Robinson or anyone else desires a fresh start.

For his part, the newest Hawk declines to revisit the ugly scene, saying only: "It is not something I’ve been ignoring and just saying I’m above it and can do anything I want to do. I apologized for it and I’ve been moving on."

His attorney, George Murtaugh, rightly cautions that the comments attributed to Ms. French come from the police report, and she’s not yet uttered a word under oath.

No one is counting on the facts being misconstrued here more than Babcock, whose club is boldly guaranteeing a playoff appearance this season. And no one is more certain this isn’t another J. R. Rider deal.

Why so?

"Well if you look at one player’s background vs. the other, one is like pages of incidents," he says. "We wouldn’t do Rider again."

You can argue Robinson hasn’t made serious off-the-court headlines but for a 1999 arrest for disorderly intoxication outside a Miami nightspot. And he carved a reasonably decent image for himself in Milwaukee, regularly donating game tickets to local youth and running a summer basketball camp for kids.

OK, so Robinson isn’t Rider and a misdemeanor isn’t a felony. But playing by the creed of no harm, no foul, the Hawks --like so many NBA clubs -- are counting on a questionable character to lead them to the postseason.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.