David Robinson's Spectacular Vacation

I first met Tim well before he entered the league. I met him when Wake Forest was still a nightmare of responsibility ahead of him. Haha. The year was 1991, and I had planned a summer trip to Cancun, but the plane decided we would go to the U.S. Virgin Islands instead. I decided this is where I would stay for the duration. But when I called to cancel my reservations in Cancun, the hotel would not hear of it. You see, the owners of my favorite Cancun hotel knew and respected me, so before long a room was flown into my new vacation spot.

So I went to the mini-bar and poured myself a moderate amount of Disney Gin and placed the rest of the bottle in the cupboard. It had a moderate amount of alcohol, but I am large and I was barely intoxicated. Also it was Disney Gin. I looked for a court so that I could play a pick-up game against some locals. The rules would be: 2v1 and I had to shoot outside shots. I walked along the beach in Christiantown, the most wholesome town in the world.

Anyway, after awhile I found a court, but it was empty. I smiled with opportunity. I love getting young people involved in basketball. I knocked on every door for a mile with a smile. Finally I gave up. Then I saw this scrappy kid on the court a mile away. I ran to catch up with him to teach him some fundamentals. I ran so fast. At that time I ran a five-minute mile, but at the three-minute mark I hit a street light, and, jogging in place, I waited for the lights to change. While I was waiting, I saw a child taller than the first child enter the arena. That child had no follow-through. I was like that screaming painting, you know the one, while watching him try to hit a futile outside shot. Then a third child entered and had terrible post moves. He was posting up on the others but they were able to take the ball from him before he could move. And they didn't even have any defensive skills. No, kids!

The Summoning

We all know, deep in our hearts, that virtue consists of all and only those things that David Robinson tried to teach us back in the day. The gnomes, Tim, are out of bounds. Not the flowers. The gnomes. The - the occult, Tim. Out of bounds. And building a school is a pretty cool thing to do too. But in the weeping moments, I sometimes crave more than what is written in the interviews and coded in the highlights. What does the Admiral think about the scaffold, for example? Where is his wisdom then?


Now, David Robinson is omnibenevolent, but certainly not omniscient - he is obviously not watching you watch his Hall of Fame speech or his old highlights; he is not so vain or idle. But while he does not see everything, he can be channeled to be anywhere. And I performed just such a channeling the other day.

That great Spurs player and school-builder appeared in a greatcoat outside my apartment - here in freezing, snowy St. Petersburg. Only Mr. Robinson's iconic face was visible through the black cloak, which was neatly ornamented with golden buttons like a constable's uniform. It looked somehow oversized, like a child's costume. This great figure was capped by a black hat shaped like a basketball court that made perfect sense when I saw it. With fast wit, I commented how GREAT his greatcoat was. He showed me that, face excepted, he was made totally of greatcoats. A mass of greatcoats, everstacked and interleaved like a planar knot. The heavy and stacked greatcoats were without flesh or form, just as Robinson himself was without malice. We were beyond the concerns of the physical world and its harsh winters. His face beamed and the winter went away.

Santa Fe Post-Draft Catharsis Symphony

Enter: A spherical room of eyes, stomachs, membranous walls, and appendages, always misshapen, always reaching across the room to the other side.

The man inside heard a seal and a lock.  Looks like he would be here for the duration.  "So this is where they put the players that don't make the playoffs.  I guess I shouldn't have been injured, heh, heh, heh."  He had better make the most of it, he supposes.  Two months will fly by when you are busy!  The stench of organs and dead flesh and meaning would have been overwhelming, but the man in question is a man of indisputable military discipline.  After a few minutes the man had started a fire on some stalagmite-shaped tonsil twitching nervously.  After a few hours his experiments began.  After a while of the man and his business, he had settled things down. 

Two months pass when you are busy, indeed.  "The finals are over!  You can all come out now!"  David Stern's voice had been transmitted to the manifold rooms of the unsuccessful Spurs. Many of them had been psychologically broken merely by the months of solitude, even excluding the special horrors of their chambers.  Each Spur in his room claimed his room and experiences were the most extreme.  Despite these claims, David Robinson's room, the flesh sphere, had in fact been the worst.  The chambers opened to reveal some unneeded therapists and a certain friend of Mr. Robinson.