SEASON 2: EPISODE 02 TRANSCRIPT

David Robinson

David Robinson: You cannot make people happy, and too many times we're running around trying to please the wrong people, and I think that's the number one cause of some of our stress. We see it in the social media, we see it in schools, we see it at work, in jobs. The key is having the right perspective. Once you understand that you are well-loved right as you are, you don't have to run to be something else. Be yourself.

Dr. Greg Jones: Our world is facing significant challenges, and at every turn, another conflict seems to await, yet we survive, we overcome, we even thrive by relying on an intangible and undeniable gift: hope. It fills us, connects us, highlights our individual purpose, and unites us in the goal to do more together. Hope fuels us toward flourishing as people and as a community.

My name is Greg Jones, President of Belmont University, and I'm honored to be your guide through candid conversations with people who demonstrate what it really means to live with hope and lean into the lessons they've picked up along their journey. They are The Hope People.

You likely know today's agent of hope as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but David Robinson, who played for the San Antonio Spurs from 1989 to 2003, is also known for his incredible philanthropic work. David and I sat together to explore the important role hope, faith, and family has played in his life as he made the transition from sports to business. We also discuss his founding of the Carver Academy, a tuition-free charter school that provides education and resources, what David calls the keys to unlocking the doors to freedom and success.

I want to begin just by asking where you find hope in your life these days.

David Robinson: Man, hope is the most important thing we can have. Being an athlete, being a basketball player, if you don't have hope, man, there's no reason to play the game, right? You got to believe you can win, right? So I think that's the key for me for life. If I don't believe there's something to shoot for, but I think I'm just running randomly and I don't have a point, I would have a hard time getting up every day. And so my faith, it's my guide post, and the Lord really shows me that there's a reason to get up and there's a reason to run. I've been married 32 years. There's a reason to keep loving her and to keep blessing her and to keep encouraging her. My hope is in Christ, right?

All this other stuff, you run and you think it's going to be good for you, you make a lot of money or you get famous or whatever, and then you realize none of that is really worth anything. At the end of the day, it's just some... It's us patting ourselves on the back saying, "Oh, you're great." Well, good. Well, what does that do? That doesn't do me any good, right? So I want to leave a lasting impression, some sweet fragrance behind in my life where I can be an encouragement to the people around me, and that's my hope is that I can leave that.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's awesome. People know you as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Talk a little bit about who your mentors were and perhaps other players or coaches you looked up to that helped mold you as a basketball player.

David Robinson: Yeah. You know, I grew up in Virginia, so I got a chance to see people like Ralph Sampson play at the University of Virginia. As a matter of fact, he's probably the reason why I used number 50. I got a chance to see Julius Erving. He played for the Virginia Squires there. He was a great role model. And so I saw some people that I admired and I thought they were well-spoken and they were people that I wanted to emulate. Of course I never thought I'd be 7'4" like Ralph Sampson, but I did grow to be a pretty good size.

It was good I had people to look towards, and my father was always, from a young age, was like, "Read the dictionary, learn the words," and those things put me in a position to be successful. And so as I grew and doors opened and opportunities opened, I was able to take advantage of them.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. You're one of those extraordinary people who had an amazing NBA career and perhaps have had an even better post-NBA career in a variety of work and business and philanthropy. Talk about the transition from being a basketball player to not seeing that as just something you retire from and then hang out with, but what's life been like post-basketball?

David Robinson: A big transition, for sure. Business and sports are, by their nature, they share a lot of the same principles. However, you approach them very differently. So as an athlete, I wanted people to leave me alone. I didn't want anyone in my space. I wanted to be focused, go out and do my job, and I had to tune out all of the media, tune out all of the voices in my head. And so switching from sports to business was very hard because I would go to meetings and people would be passing their cards out and I would be thinking to myself, I'd hand my card to people and I'd be like, "Please don't call me, please don't call me, please don't call me." You know? I had such a mentality of, "I can do this, I can do this," but you can't. You need people, you need to have relationships, you need to build networks, and so that took me a little while to understand and a little while to make that adjustment.

I don't know if I've fully made that adjustment yet, but I do enjoy the challenges because even though they're a little more drawn out, the great thing about sports is, man, you fail, you find out right away. People are going to boo you right off the court and you're going to learn, "Don't do that again." In business, it might be six months before you learn, "Okay, that was the wrong move. I shouldn't have done that. I should have invested here. I shouldn't have done that." So it's a little bit slower kind of a process, but the challenges are, like I said, similar: building teams, having goals, leadership. There's so many things that you can translate from one side to the other, so it's been a fun transition for me.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. I want to take you back to growing up because you've talked with a lot of people, including me, about your parents and the importance of family growing up. Talk a little bit about how they instilled in you the kind of character and hope that you've carried forward.

David Robinson: Yeah, no, I mean, I'm so blessed to have had the parents that I have. My mom died three years ago now, and she grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, rural. Columbia is the capital, but she was in a small part of the city there and actually near a very, very good high school, but it was a white high school, and so they bused her out to the Black high school. And so when she graduated from high school, she had to run away from home because she felt like, "If I stay here in South Carolina, I'm going to just marry some country bumpkin and my life is never going to change."

So she ran away, went up north to New Hampshire and went to the nursing school. And so I see my mom as a visionary, right? She chased after something. She didn't even know what she was running after, but she knew that she had to get away from where she was in the segregated Columbia, South Carolina.

My father, similar story, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, which even today is, from an education standpoint, there's the biggest disparity between lower-income performance and higher-income performance in the country, really. And so my father had to get out of there as soon as possible. He ran away, joined the Navy, enlisted in the Navy, was in 20 years.

And so both of them were running towards something they didn't even know what they wanted to do, but me and my brother and sister are the beneficiaries of that. Because of that, I ended up getting my master's degree, my sister got her PhD and was teaching at the University of Charleston, and my brother went to the Naval Academy afterwards and became a pastor. And so I feel like my parents laid that foundation. They decided they weren't going to stay in those communities, they weren't going to cut off our opportunities, and it paid off wildly for us.

Dr. Greg Jones: It's an amazing story of parents and the difference they've made in you and your brother and sister's lives. That's pretty extraordinary. One of the things you've done also is really invest in philanthropy and you started the Carver Academy, and now it's a network of schools. Why is education important as a pathway to hope and talk about the way in which you've developed the Carver Academy project?

David Robinson: Yeah, Greg, thanks for asking that. That's been one of my passions. I saw the difference in our family. I saw what education did in just two generations. My father was one of those people at Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, they were looking for young African Americans that could make the transition into a white high school, and they asked him to be one of those people and he declined. He said, "No way. I'm not going through that," and we all know the story of those nine people. Only one graduated. Terrible things happened to those kids that went to that school, but it was necessary. It needed to happen.

And so for me, I feel a lot of responsibility. For me, the education is what transfers everything. George Washington Carver said, "Education is the golden key that unlocks the door to freedom," and that's what I tell the kids at Carver Academy. "Understand this. Carver grew up as a slave. He had nothing. He had a Bible. That was the only book he had, really up to the time he was like 12 years old, but education transformed his life, and before you know it, he's sitting before Congress talking about agriculture, and they had five minutes at the end of Congress and they're like, 'Okay, well, let's listen to this man,' and they gave an extra hour for him to explain all the wonderful things he was doing and how he was transforming what was happening in the agricultural world."

And so it can take you a long way, and I tried to teach that to my kids, now we're trying to do that in our communities. For so long, these lines have been drawn. You see these highways that were built to stop commerce from going from one side of the town to the next. You see all of these built-in infrastructures that are just patently designed to stop integration, and so education is the thing that will unlock those doors.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's amazing and just so inspiring to hear, the hope that that brings to young people who might otherwise not feel like they have avenues of hope and how to make that progress. One of the things that I really admire about your philanthropic work is that you've had a multiplier impact. It's not just providing money. The starting of the Carver Academy has created a network of schools and inspired other kinds of things. You also have created the Admiral Center to inspire other people. Talk about how you're trying to create that multiplier effect as an agent of hope.

David Robinson: You know, I feel like my strength is bringing people together and my strength is inspiring people to move, and so that's where I feel like I can be a multiplier. I can point people in the right direction, I can get them excited about the projects, and that's what we've done in San Antonio. We started with one school that was a private school. We turned into a charter school, joined this charter school network, IDEA Public Schools, and now we've built 30 new schools in San Antonio, charter schools that are amazing. Our goal is to send every single child to college, open that door for low-income students. We build our schools in low-income areas, and we have 100% matriculation to college.

And people will argue today, "Oh, well, college is a mixed bag for people," but you know what? For 80% of our kids this year were first in their family to go to college. And so when you can open those kinds of doors and make sure that the opportunity is there and you can show them something new, show them something different, and they know that it's possible to go have success, and so that's where we've been a multiplier in South Texas and now we're growing. We built schools in Florida and Little Rock, Arkansas, and we're stretching out, we went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and New Orleans, and hopefully we can be a multiplier all around the country.

Dr. Greg Jones: Wow, that's incredible. It's amazing all the work you're doing and accomplishing so much. I want to take you back to sports for a moment and how that's also helped you think about life. You're so positive and inspirational, but there are also setbacks and failures that happen in sports and in life. And how do you think about the challenges and obstacles that you encounter and how to overcome them and stay focused on the future and possibilities?

David Robinson: I think my obstacles are tiny compared to what my mother and father faced. My father played basketball. My uncle was a really good basketball player in Little Rock, and when he went to school, he was the first Black player to graduate, basketball player, at Central High School in Little Rock. But my grandfather wasn't able to go to the games. They would not let him in the stadium when he would go to the games. And so I think to myself, "Man, I got nothing compared to what my parents had to deal with. Nothing compared to what George Washington Carver had to deal with." I have some obstacles, sure, and I've always had them. I knew growing up, my mom and dad said, "Things are going to be harder for you. Opportunities are not going to be as plentiful for you. You're going to have to be better than competition. If you go to apply for a job, expect to have to be better than everybody else or else you're not going to get the jobs."

And so knowing that coming in and knowing, "I've just got to do the work, I've got to do the work, I've got to break the barriers," and you can stand up and say, "No, I'm going to college, but I'm going to come back and help the family in a few years. As opposed to having to go work construction now and try to lift a little bit of the burden, I'm going to come back and lift a lot of the burden later."

Dr. Greg Jones: That's beautiful. You clearly are a mentor to young people through the Carver Academy and in so many other ways. It began, in some ways, when you were with the Spurs, and another guy who turned out to be a pretty good basketball player named Tim Duncan joined you in San Antonio, and that could have been a rivalry, it could have inspired jealousy, and yet you welcomed him into the team and brought him along in a way that then he achieved pretty considerable greatness.

Talk about how you've seen leadership in trying to mentor others and befriend others, whether it's kids at the Carver Academy or basketball players, just the role of mentoring in inspiring hope and helping people achieve excellence.

David Robinson: Yeah, I take all the credit for Tim. No, I just counted myself so fortunate. I mean, we were in a small market in San Antonio. When I got there, we were not a very good team, right? The reason they got me first pick in the draft is because we were one of the worst teams in the league. And so we had a lot of challenges, just thinking about how do you build a team in a small market? How do you get free agents to come to a small market? How do you go from winning 21 games to winning 60 games, and what, are you going to rely on the draft? Or you got to build a team and you've got to build from within. And you'll get lucky every once in a while with a Tim Duncan. We got lucky many times. We got lucky with Tim Duncan, we got lucky with Kawhi Leonard, we got lucky with Manu Ginóbili, and Tony Parker, and then now Victor Wembanyama.

So we've gotten lucky, but that luck has also come beside just some focus and some hard work and some hope and building a foundation and a culture, all those things that are so important, and it's no different with our schools. Culture is critical. If you don't build the right culture where these kids expect to go to college, just like my mother and father built a culture in our family and they said, from as young as I can remember, "You're going to college." Neither one of them went to college, but they said, "There's no way we're not making you guys go to college," and so I never thought of not going to college as an option. So much about it is culture, if you can build that expectation. And everyone knows it from their own family, if you build an expectation, your kids will rise to that expectation.

So I think that that's been the key for our success at the Carver Academy and at IDEA Public Schools and even with the Spurs is building a higher expectation. We had to start saying, "Okay, look, we're all on the same team. We've got the same goals. Let's figure this out. We're not enemies with the guys writing the paychecks. We're not enemies with the coaching staff. Yes, they have their own interests, just like you have your own interests, but we have mutual interests as well."

And so that's how I try to do it with the students. We mentor them once a month and we bring in community leaders and we talk to these kids, but we have a mutual goal. I told them, "I love you guys. I love coming here. Every one of us, the teachers, all the people love coming here. We want the same thing for you. I mean, I don't make any money from coming here and spending my whole Saturday with you, so my interest is you." And once you build that kind of a culture, you start to see those kids flourish. They come up to the plate. They all want to be the best they can. They want to be the next generation of leaders. They love the input. And so I've always felt like it's incumbent upon us to build the right culture.

Dr. Greg Jones: I love your emphasis on culture and you helped to shape a really powerful one with the Spurs. I know you continue to be involved there. I want to take you to a very different kind of culture that also involves teamwork, and that is your own family, you and your wife and your now young adult children. But I remember in the early days of COVID through the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, we were on a Zoom call together and Sanyin Siang asked everybody on the call what we were working on with leadership. And your first comment was, "Well, mostly trying to be a better husband and father."

David Robinson: Yeah. Well, that's where it starts.

Dr. Greg Jones: And drop the mic. Nobody else is going to have anything to say after that.

David Robinson: Amen.

Dr. Greg Jones: And it was really clarifying for me of what really matters in priorities, and that was really powerful.

David Robinson: Yeah. You know, I just don't believe leadership exists if you can't start at home. I mean, that's the highest test of your integrity. That's the highest test of your ability to lead. If you can't lead the people right in front of you, I mean, how do you expect to help the person in your office if you can't lead the people right in front of you? And there's no hiding from it, right? Your wife, your kids see everything. It is the greatest test of character. It's where you start.

And you know, I hear all these people talking about leadership, and my first reaction is, "Tell me what your wife is like. Tell me what your kids are like. Tell me what your family is like," because that's the foundation. If you failed at home, I don't know if there's a better gauge of leadership or integrity or any of that stuff. A flower doesn't start with the petals. It starts in the core. And you want to be a beautiful flower. And I think that's the only way to really leave a lasting impression.

Dr. Greg Jones: Well, I think people can see your leadership in the quality of your kids. They are remarkable young adults achieving some wonderful things. I want to return for a moment. You've talked a couple of times about the importance of faith in your life and that Christ is the source of your hope. How has your faith shaped your sense of hope and the kind of leadership that you provide?

David Robinson: Well, I mean, that's a great question, Greg. I remember watching one of my favorite basketball players, he won the championship, and he was sitting there hugging trophy. And I thought to myself, "He's accomplished all these things he's been chasing all these years, and all they're going to do is tell him, 'So what? The other guy has won three, four, five championships, so now you're going to have to go back and prove that you're even better.'" And I thought, "That's a never-ending race." And then when you're finished playing, they're going to, as we've seen with so many athletes, it's the chase to tear them down, right?

And it's like Paul says. Paul said, "All the things I thought were important, I now count as a loss and to the surpassing knowledge of Christ." And I realized that because when I retired, everybody was saying, "Oh, wow, you're going to miss it. It's going to be terrible, blah, blah, blah." And I was thinking, "No, it's not. I get to go home and be a husband and be Dad, and I get to... It's a whole new challenge for me. This other part was just the beginning."

You go before the Lord and the Lord says, "What did you do with what I gave you?" "Oh, well, you know, I made the Hall of Fame. I scored 20,000 points. I did such and such," and the Lord's going to be like that lady dropping a penny in the offering and everybody looking like, "Oh my gosh, what are you doing?" And the Lord's going to say, "Yeah, okay, well, that's what I gave you. Now tell me how you multiplied it. What did you do with it?"

Dr. Greg Jones: Wow.

David Robinson: And that was when my mother died, that was the thing I realized because she took what she was given and multiplied it a thousand fold. And then I thought to myself, "Well, what have I really done? I was given so much more and I'm going to be responsible for so much more." And it really challenged me to continue running the race, to take this incredible, mountainous blessing that I've been given and multiply that a thousand.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's beautiful. You are such an extraordinary person, a person of great accomplishments and impact in so many people's lives. To be in your presence is to be inspired by that sense of hope.

David Robinson: Oh, thanks, Greg.

Dr. Greg Jones: And your impact as a leader is extraordinary and your joy in the Lord and your leadership is just infectious. I want to ask you one final question. We're living in a time when young people, and especially young athletes, are struggling with mental health issues and can chase the wrong things and get focused on performance perhaps at the expense of being centered and developing character in a strong way. What advice would you have for young people, especially young athletes, who look up to people like you?

David Robinson: Yeah, my basic advice would be get off the hamster wheel, you know? You cannot make people happy. And too many times we're running around trying to please the wrong people, and I think that's the number one cause of some of our stress, right? We see it in the social media, we see it in schools, we see it at work, in jobs.

So I think the key is having the right perspective. Once you understand that you are well-loved right as you are, you don't have to run to be something else, right? Be yourself. Just be confident and comfortable in who God has created you and know that He's given you all the tools you need to deal with your current situation. And all of us feel overwhelmed. We have this imposter syndrome, but there's no such thing in Christ. It's you are exactly who you're supposed to be. I don't have to know things I'm not supposed to know. I don't have to be more impressive than I am. I just have to be me and let God do the rest of the work.

Dr. Greg Jones: Thank you for participating in this conversation with The Hope People. Our aim is to inspire you to become an agent of hope yourself and to help us cultivate a sense of well-being for all. To join our mission and learn more about this show, visit thehopepeoplepodcast.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, remember to rate and review wherever you get your audio content.