“I was trying to play in the Euro Cup or the Euro League, I wanted to play in the best competition,” he said. The only problem? By the time he decided to pick up his sneakers again, all of the teams he wanted to play on overseas were full. Robinson said that his first choice was to play in one of the more competitive leagues overseas. It doesn’t matter what level, where around the world, I just want to play and have fun and I love to just be myself when I’m out there.” “That’s something that I do know about myself is that I just love the game so much that I’ll play it wherever.
February 2017 loot locker nba tv#
“I love the game,” Robinson told NBA TV in February shortly after getting picked up by the 87ers. “I wish I would have tried earlier in my career.”Īfter a few months on the sideline, he decided he wanted to play basketball again. In June of 2016, he tried out for his hometown Seattle Seahawks - he’d actually gone to the University of Washington on a football scholarship and started six games at cornerback as a freshman before deciding to focus on basketball - but they never called. In March of 2016, he headed to Israel where he played for Hapoel Tel Aviv’ before returning home to focus on a new goal: The NFL. Robinson last appeared in the NBA in October 2015 with the Pelicans, playing in two games. Now 32, a man who seemed to defy gravity for a decade is trying to relaunch from here, an arena at the University of Delaware. Robinson won three NBA slam-dunk contest titles and averaged more than 20 minutes, generally coming off the bench, over 11 seasons. He’s not assuming anything about when he’ll get another chance to have the NBA career he thinks he’s earned. After all the turns his career has taken he knows he should also stay in the moment, enjoy where he is. Robinson is here because he’s intent on clawing his way back to the NBA, but he’s not treating this as some stopover. He assures a dad who overheard the conversation that if they bring popcorn to the next game, he’ll buy some. “See, the girls got you beat right now: They had the cookies ready for us.” “You didn’t bring the popcorn for us to buy?” he asks, appearing to be half-joking, half actually disappointed. They tell him that they sell popcorn, but don’t have any at the game. A line of Boy Scouts reaches Robinson and he asks if they’re selling anything as a fundraiser. His reminiscing lasts only a few moments. “Good old days,” he says, turning it over to examine the back, then the front again. When Robinson sees it, he sighs and signs it. But they don’t really know, couldn’t fathom that in the same line there’s a fan holding a card showing Robinson wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. They had just witnessed him score 23 points, grab three rebounds, dish out three assists and make three steals - a typical Robinson performance. They know he’s one of the team’s better players, and, at just 5-foot-9, one of the more interesting to watch. Some of the fans he speaks with and signs for are too young to know who he is.
Now, nearly an hour later, he is scribbling on hats, t-shirts and iPhone cases for the 80 or so fans still lingering in the arena. His D-League team, the Delaware 87ers, had lost 110-99 to the Windy City Bulls in front of 3,076 people. – It’s 10 PM on a Saturday night and Nate Robinson, one of the most entertaining players under 6-feet ever to wear an NBA uniform, is sitting at a long autograph table with a Sharpie in hand.
0 kommentar(er)
