David Robinson was born in Key West, Florida on August 6, 1965. He was the second child of Ambrose and Freda Robinson. Since Robinson's father was in the Navy, the family moved many times. After his father retired from the Navy, the family settled in Virginia Beach, Virginia where Robinson excelled in school and in most sports except basketball. He was 5 feet, 9 inches tall in junior high school so he tried basketball, but he soon quit. Robinson attended Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, Virginia just outside of Washington D.C., where Robinson's father was working as an engineer after retiring from the Navy. By his senior year in high school he was 6 feet, 7 inches tall, but he had not played organized basketball. When the coach added the tall senior to the basketball team, Robinson earned all-area and all-district honors but generated little interest among college basketball coaches. Basketball was not his first priority anyway—getting an education was. Robinson scored a 1320 on the SAT, and he chose to go to the United States Naval Academy, where he majored in mathematics.
College basketball career
He was the best basketball player at the Naval Academy, choosing jersey number 50 after his idol Ralph Sampson. By the time he took the court in his first basketball game for Navy, he had grown to 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m), and over the course of his college basketball career, he grew to 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m). In his final two years, he was a consensus All-American, and won college basketball's two most prestigious player awards, the Naismith and Wooden Awards, as a Naval Academy first classman (senior). Upon graduation, he became eligible for the 1987 NBA Draft and was selected by the San Antonio Spurs with the first overall pick; however, the Spurs had to wait two years before he could join them because he had to fulfill two years of Navy duty.
In a mildly controversial, yet understandable move, the Navy excused him from three years of the normal five years of his military commitment following graduation from the Naval Academy because his height prohibited his deployment in many roles (e.g. aviation, the submarine corps, and many ships). Nonetheless, Robinson continued to serve in a reserve role with the Navy and was regularly featured in recruiting materials for the service. Despite the nickname "Admiral", Robinson's actual rank upon fulfilling his service commitment was Lieutenant, Junior Grade.
At the Naval Academy, Robinson was an outstanding all-around athlete and chess player; during the physical tests that the Academy gives all incoming plebes he scored higher in gymnastics than anyone in his class. This was even more impressive due to his height: 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) at the time. To put this in perspective, virtually all male gymnasts are well under 6 ft (1.83 m) tall, and the service academies prohibit enrollment to anyone taller than 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m). However, the academies do not drop students who grow past this height limit after enrolling, which later benefited Robinson.
Although there was speculation that Robinson might choose not to sign with the Spurs and to become a free agent once his Navy commitment ended, Robinson decided in the end to come to San Antonio. Robinson joined the Spurs for the 1989-90 season, and he helped the team produce the second greatest single season turnaround in NBA history(the Spurs also hold the record for greatest turnaround, in 1997-98, after drafting Tim Duncan). The Spurs went from 21-61[5] in the 1988-89 NBA season to 56-26 in 1989-90, for a remarkable 35 game improvement. They advanced to the second round of the Western Conference playoffs where they lost in seven games to the eventual western conference champions, the Portland Trail Blazers. Following the 1989-90 season, he was unanimously named the NBA rookie of the year, and subsequently SEGA produced a game featuring him entitled David Robinson's Supreme Court
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