A Season Inside (9 page)

That is the nature of college basketball. No one wins without players. That is why the games on the court are so much simpler than the ones off the court. In recruiting, everyone has an angle, a pitch. Those are the good guys. The bad ones are the cheaters, the ones who pay players and get away with it because the NCAA enforcement staff is so undermanned that it can only catch the amateur cheaters like Marist and Cleveland State. The experts, the ones who have been doing it for years, never get caught. They are too smart and/or too powerful.

Valvano says it best: “If you are a decent human being on any level you must hate what we do in recruiting.”

And no one is a better recruiter than Jim Valvano.

The first player chosen in the 1987 NBA draft rounded the corner, car keys in hand, and started for the door.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” The woman’s voice was stern, though she was fighting a grin.

“Lunch,” he answered. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”

“Okay then,” the woman said. “But you still have work to do when you come back.”

Ensign David Robinson nodded, smiled, and ducked his head going through the door of the trailer. It was a warm November day in south Georgia. Ten days earlier he had signed a contract to play basketball for the San Antonio Spurs that had made him rich, extremely rich. Over an eight-year period, the Spurs would pay him about $26 million. “It’s the kind of money,” he said, “that doesn’t even seem real to me.”

This, though, was very real. This was King’s Bay, Georgia, the offices of the Resident Officer in Charge of Construction on what would become, during the next three years, a giant submarine base. Robinson, six months removed from the Naval Academy, worked for the ROICC negotiating with contractors. For this, he was paid considerably less than $26 million. About $1,500 a month was more like it.

“I live a double life,” he said, sitting in the tiny town of St. Mary’s fanciest restaurant, a Pizza Hut. “In one world, I rule. Everything I could possibly want is there on a silver platter for me. I’m rich and famous and because of that I have power.

“In the other world I’m at the bottom of the totem pole. I have to ask permission to go to lunch. I fetch coffee for people. It helps me keep things in perspective. The best thing about the Navy is the worst thing about the Navy: Everyone gets treated the same.”

David Robinson is seven-foot-one. He can run, jump, and shoot. To most of the world that makes him a superstar, a basketball player with unlimited potential. To the Navy, it just makes him a headache. He’s too tall, too rich, and too famous. But he spent four years at the Naval Academy and graduated with a degree in engineering.

No one, not Robinson, not the Navy, ever imagined when he enrolled as a 6–7 freshman with some interest—but not a lot—in basketball, that he would end up as the college player of the year. The Navy is not entirely unreasonable. It is willing to let Robinson out in two years, three years less than the five-year commitment usually required of Academy graduates. It wants him to play in the Olympics as Ensign David Robinson. After that, after he has been the Navy’s top recruiter for two years, he can play all the basketball he wants and make all the money he wants.

In the meantime, he asks permission to go to lunch. “I never dreamed that playing basketball would ever become so important to me,” he said. “I understand the Navy’s point of view completely. But it’s hard for me. When I watch the Spurs play, I know I could help, I know they could win more games if I was playing. But right now, all I can do is wait.”

He smiled. “It isn’t so bad, though. I’ve got a lot to look forward to.”

The same could not be said for Kevin Houston, at least in basketball. It was a remarkable coincidence that both Houston and Robinson had been college seniors in 1987. While Robinson had been the third leading scorer in the country at Navy, Houston had been two spots ahead of him—at No. 1—while playing for Army.

It was rare enough that Army or Navy would produce a genuine star. For each school to produce one at exactly the same time was extraordinary. But although they each had military academy backgrounds, the differences between Robinson and Houston were far more striking than the similarities.

“He’s seven-one and he can run and he can jump,” Houston said. “I’m five-eleven and I don’t run or jump very well. About the only thing we have in common is that we can both play pretty well.”

Robinson was a fluke of nature. He had never cared that much for basketball and had chosen the Naval Academy for a specific reason. His father, Ambrose Robinson, had spent twenty years in the Navy and David wanted to follow in his footsteps. But then he grew six inches in two years and become a great player. That changed his plans.

Houston always wanted to play basketball. His father, Jerry, had played for Joe Lapchick at St. John’s in the 1960s. In fact, it was Jerry Houston who made the last two free throws in Lapchick’s farewell to coaching, a 55–51 victory over Villanova in the 1965 NIT Final.

Jerry Houston coached basketball after he was through playing. He coached high school ball, boy’s club ball, and for one year was an assistant coach at Fordham. Although Kevin grew up in suburban Pearl River, New York, he was shaped as a basketball player in New York City, where his father took him to play against the best players.

Houston certainly didn’t look like a schoolyard ballplayer. With his reddish hair and freckles he looked a lot more like Tom Sawyer than a basketball player. “When I first started playing in the city a lot of guys looked at me and thought I was some kind of white, suburban, faggot jump-shooter,” Houston said, laughing at the memory. “But I sort of enjoy proving to people that I can do what they don’t think I can do.”

That was the story of Houston’s college career, too. Only Army recruited him with any real zeal and his decision to go to West Point was based on one thing: a chance to play. He got it right away and, just as quickly, became a key player. “One thing about Kevin is that he’s never been awed by anyone he’s played against,” Army Coach Les Wohtke said. “That has a lot to do with his playing background.”

If Houston had played almost anywhere in the country other than a military academy he would have been the best-known person on campus. But at Army, football is still the only sport that truly matters and, because he didn’t
look
like a player, Houston went unnoticed most of the time.

“I’d come down to the gym in the spring to play pickup ball and I couldn’t get chosen,” he said. “I’d have to wait around and call winners to get a chance to play. No one knew who I was and when they looked at me no one figured I could play.

“The summer before my senior year I was stationed at Fort Knox. One weekend, Ron Steptoe [a teammate from Army] and I went over to a gym to play. We walked in and there were nine guys in the place.
With us, that made eleven. I said to Ron, ‘When we choose up, watch, I won’t be picked.’ I was hoping we would shoot free throws to see who played or something. But no. They chose up and guess who ended up watching?”

Houston can tell these stories and laugh because he knows he can play. He proved it beyond any doubt his senior season when he averaged 32.9 points per game, including a 38-point game at Navy. “I’ve never seen a guy light it up like that in my life,” Robinson said. “He never changed expression. He just kept pouring it on.”

Houston plays with the same deadpan expression whether he hits ten straight shots or misses ten straight. Nothing seems to bother him. But in the spring of ’87, when the invitations went out to the Pan American Games trials, Houston didn’t get one. That bothered him.

“My first thought was, ‘Damn, how could they leave me out?’ ” he said. “I’m not even saying I would have made the team but I thought I deserved the chance to try out. It really pissed me off. I still don’t understand it.”

Houston was not alone. Wohtke was baffled. Ironically, Robinson, who really didn’t care whether he played in the Pan Ams, had a virtually automatic spot on the team. Houston, who would have committed to an extra five years in the Army just for a trials invitation, never got a phone call.

That is the difference between being 7–1 and 5–11. The gap is much wider than fourteen inches. Robinson, in addition to his $26 million contract, has a life filled with endorsements and a very probable spot on the Olympic team to look forward to. Houston knows that most of his basketball is behind him. “Anything I do from here on will be my last hurrah,” he said. “But that’s all I want is that last shot, one more chance to really prove I can play.”

As he spoke, Houston was sitting in a small restaurant less than a mile from West Point, where he was temporarily assigned as a graduate assistant coach. This was in November, two days after Robinson had signed his contract. Houston was happy for Robinson but he was a lot happier about news he had just received: His application to try out for the All-Army basketball team had been approved. This meant that instead of shipping out to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for officer’s basic training in field artillery, he would be going to San Francisco in January to try out for the Army team, a group of all-stars that would barnstorm the country.

To Houston, this was the one last chance he had been hoping for. The All-Army team would finish its tour in March at an armed forces tournament in North Carolina. At that tournament, an all-Armed Forces team would be chosen. They would play together through April. That would mean that
if
Houston could get an invitation to the Olympic Trials he would be in playing shape when they began on May 18.

“When I heard I was going to San Francisco, it was like new life,” he said. “I really thought maybe it was over for me, but now I’ve got this shot. Ever since I got the news, I’ve been working out every night after the team practices to get the feel back.”

Houston was not alone when he practiced. His wife of five months, Elizabeth, rebounded for him. He shot, she rebounded and passed. This was where Kevin Houston’s last go-round began.

“If Kevin had to put the basketball down and walk away, I think he could do it without any regrets,” Wohtke said. “He’s given the game everything he has. But I think the people in the game owe him more than that. He deserves the chance to find out, one way or the other.”

It would be April before Houston would find out if he would have that chance. In the meantime, he kept shooting and Elizabeth kept rebounding.

When he had time to play, Robinson had no trouble finding rebounders. He was working out with Jacksonville University which was located less than thirty miles from King’s Bay. But even this setup was complicated. In order to be allowed to practice with Jacksonville, Robinson had to be listed as a volunteer coach for the team. The NCAA, ever vigilant, was on top of that. If something is irrelevant, you can be sure the NCAA will be on the scene.

Intellectually, Robinson understood that he was a very lucky person. But emotionally, not playing bothered him. Those who had known him a long time thought this was funny, since Robinson had never really cared about basketball until he had become very good at it. Robinson understood the irony involved, too. He is an inordinately bright young man who, even with all the attention he has received, has remained unaffected. His newfound financial status amused him as much as anything.

“A couple weeks ago I was in a Burger King,” he said. “The guy
behind the counter recognized me and he said, ‘Hey Robinson, when you sign your contract for all that money come back here and I’ll give you some free food.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Why would you give me free food
after
I’m rich? Why not give it to me now when I need it?’

“But that’s the way the world is. If you’ve got things, people want to give you more. If you haven’t got anything, no one wants to give you a thing.

“The night I signed my contract in San Antonio I went into a bar with some people. I was amazed. All of a sudden, I had gotten much better looking. I was a lot funnier. And everyone wanted to buy me a drink. I thought it was remarkable how I had suddenly been transformed at the age of twenty-two. It couldn’t have been the money, right?”

Robinson was laughing. His two-year commitment to the Navy is not the only thing that makes him different from most NBA top draft choices.

When he first emerged as a star during his sophomore year at Navy, there was a lot of pressure on Robinson to transfer. If he had left the Academy before his junior year, he would have been free from his five-year service commitment. But after a good deal of agonizing, Robinson decided to stay.

He often wondered during his junior year if he had made a mistake. He wanted to play pro basketball when he graduated. The Navy held the cards, though. It could release him from his commitment because he was too tall ever to go to sea. It could compromise, ask him to stick around for a couple years as a recruiter while playing in the Olympics. Or it could be hard-nosed and demand he stay in the service for five years. It was the last possibility that scared Robinson.

“I really didn’t have any idea what they were going to do,” he said. “But the five years was possible, I knew that. Once, I had looked forward to it. Now, I was scared of it.”

In February of his senior season he got the word: two years. The Navy had compromised. The night before he learned what his fate was, knowing the decision was coming, Robinson played the worst game of his career in a loss to Richmond. “It was the only time the whole thing got to me,” he said. “I didn’t even care that much when we lost. I was really bad.”

The two years meant Robinson would be expected to play for the
U.S. in the Pan American Games and the Olympics. Having played against the Soviets the previous summer in the World Championships, Robinson would have preferred the NBA. But the choice wasn’t his.

Robinson ended his college career by scoring 50 points in Navy’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Michigan. At game’s end, as the Navy band played the alma mater, Robinson felt frightened for the first time in memory. “It was like a moment of silence for my college career,” he said. “I realized it was over and I thought, ‘What happens next?’ It was scary.”