“The way you use what you’ve been given is critical to fulfilling your purpose.”

David Robinson knows how to captivate an audience. He held his fans spellbound for 14 years with his grace and agility on the basketball court as center for the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs. He captures attention now with his speaking skills at engagements around the world. Recently, he took the stage at the cavernous AT&T Center at an event sponsored by Max Lucado’s Oak Hills Church, where Robinson is a Minister-at-Large. “This used to be my house, the house of the Spurs,” he announced to the delight of the 12,000-plus people who had shown up to hear him speak. “But today it’s God’s house.”

That Robinson is a man of God comes as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with his story; what does come as a surprise is the fact that this two-time NBA champion was never particularly enamored with the game of basketball and had difficulty envisioning it as a career.

The Rise of a Champion

“I grew up playing Little League. I loved baseball,” Robinson reminisces. “If I had thought I was going to be a professional athlete, I would have thought baseball.”

Life has a funny way of intervening, though. Robinson’s growth accelerated in the 9th grade. He added about 3-inches in height a year for the next five years. By the time he was a high school senior, he was 6-feet, 7-inches and had begun playing basketball, although it still held no special allure.

“There was nothing special about basketball,” Robinson reiterates. “It didn’t have any particular pull. I didn’t feel like I was particularly good at it, but I like competition and I was a good athlete.”

While it was a late start by any measure, Robinson began attracting attention from scouts with local colleges. Once again, in his mind, basketball took a back seat to academics.

“I still wanted to go to school for the education,” Robinson says. Growing up, his parents pushed him to be the best he could be in whatever he did. The middle of three children, Robinson says, “My sister was the bossy one. My brother was kind of a free, wild child. I was the disciplined, always wanted to follow the rules kid. I felt like I kind of blended in. I was in between the two turmoils.” Laughing, he adds, “It was great. It allowed me to be who I wanted to be. I never felt like I had to live up to any expectations.”

He was, however, expected to excel academically. “Fortunately, I loved school, so it was never even a question whether I was going to go to college. When the opportunity came to go to the Naval Academy, I thought, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity. This is my dream.’” Robinson explains that this decision would have an “incredible impact” on his life, forcing him to confront and improve upon a personal weakness: self-discipline. It also changed his way of thinking.

“I never grew up thinking about being rich or famous; it never even occurred to me. All I ever really wanted was to have a nice wife and a good family,” Robinson says. “The Naval Academy opened my eyes to thinking, ‘You can travel the world . . . you can do whatever you want to do.’ It sparked my imagination.”

Spurred on to Victory

Even Robinson may not have been able to imagine what his future would hold. After graduating from the Academy with a degree in mathematics and computer science, Robinson was chosen, in June of 1987, as a first-round draft pick by the San Antonio Spurs and that November was offered a $26 million, eight-year contract, plus a $2 million signing bonus, making him the highest-paid athlete in team sports at the time. After serving his two-year commitment to the Navy, Robinson began his professional basketball career in 1989 and, unlike many other players, would remain with one team—the Spurs—throughout his entire 14-year career.

Those were heady days with the Spurs, as the team claimed the NBA championships twice during Robinson’s tenure—in 1999 and again in 2003, the year he retired. Despite the fame and glory, Robinson sensed something was missing from his life and, in 1991, he became a born-again Christian. He also found that “nice wife” he had dreamed about while growing up and, later that same year, he and Valerie Hoggatt were married.

Robinson is hard-pressed to name the single biggest moment of his career, but he says the best moment was his last game—winning the championship and having his wife and three sons there to share it with him.

“It was a great way to end that period of my life. I was still healthy and, with my faith, I felt like, man, there are all these wonderful places I can go now, and things I can do still for the Lord, and this was just Phase One. It was a great moment,” Robinson recalls, smiling at the memory.

The Joy of Giving

Even before his retirement from the Spurs, Robinson had long been admired for his philanthropy, and, as always, he tried to find creative ways to integrate sports and education. As far back as 1991, just two years after he turned pro, Robinson promised 94 fifth-graders at Gates Elementary in San Antonio that he would give them $2000 each to apply toward college or technical school, if they stayed in school and graduated from high school. When 50 of the 94 graduated in 1998, he actually gave them $8000 each toward higher education.

As Number 50 (his jersey number), he donated 50 tickets to every Spurs home game, but not just to anybody. Tickets were awarded to schoolchildren who had been nominated by their teachers for their academic accomplishments.

Through the Robinson Foundation that he and wife Valerie set up in 1992, millions of dollars have been donated to local charities. His generosity was so inspiring that, in 2003, the NBA re-named its player award for charitable giving after Robinson.

In 2001, Robinson would make his biggest personal and financial commitment when he established the Carver Academy for disadvantaged children in San Antonio.

Carving a New Path

“After all my traveling in the NBA and seeing young kids in different cities and their priorities, it seemed like [things were] so skewed. Everybody wanted to be a rapper or a basketball player,” he says without a trace of irony, “and I just thought, ‘We need to address that basic flaw in our society and give kids an opportunity to see how great education is.’” Once they do, Robinson says, “All the limitations just start to disappear.”

In addition to academics, the school provides a number of creative outlets that simulate real-world jobs in TV, newspaper and the Web. “They become writers, artists and musicians, and all of the sudden, the possibilities begin to become real for them,” Robinson explains.

Robinson believes the faith component is what sets the Carver Academy apart from other schools. “It’s easy to talk about God, but when you have people right here who are willing to be the hands of God and to help [these children], they find out there are incredible opportunities out there,” he says, referring to the success the Academy is seeing with its students and, by extension, their families.

Robinson talks about the generational changes he and the staff have witnessed, and the way education can change a family’s vision of itself. “A lot of what we have to do here is help educate families, show them that there are more possibilities,” he explains. “We can come alongside a family and help them accomplish the goals that they really want for their kids.”

Robinson has goals for his own boys, who are now in the 7th, 9th and 11th grades (and who have moved on from the Carver Academy, which currently only holds classes through 6th grade). “I want them to have lives that mean something. I want them to understand the big picture. I don’t particularly care about financial success,” he says with conviction. “It’s nice to see your kids doing well, but it’s better to see them doing good.” Robinson, who admits he had to learn to be a dad after being an absentee parent for much of his professional basketball career, knows the importance of leading by example.

Investing In the Future

Building a school from the ground up is a costly venture and, while he and Valerie have contributed over $11 million of their own money to support the Academy, Robinson spends much of his time these days raising money to fund scholarships for the 120 students enrolled at the school. Toward that end, Robinson recently established the Admiral Capital Group to help with what he describes as the “very, very difficult” task of raising significant sums of money.

Here, he echoes a familiar refrain. “There was nothing particular about the financial business. Investing in real estate, investing in communities, gives me a platform to impact those people in those communities [by] creating jobs, creating education opportunities. I think we’ve partnered with some phenomenal folks. There’s so much we can do in the communities we invest in. We get a good return for our investors, but we can also get a good return for the real people that live in those communities.”

The Power of Words

Robinson is now a businessman and an educator, but basketball still plays a part in his life. His contributions to the sport were recognized in September when he was inducted into the Naismith NBA Hall of Fame along with John Stockton, Vivian Stringer, Michael Jordan and Jerry Sloan. It was quite an honor for the man who was an “accidental” basketball player.

When asked if he has ever contemplated writing an autobiography, Robinson relays a story he read recently about Albert Einstein that he says made him laugh. Einstein had been invited to speak at a college before a large crowd. When it was his turn, he walked up to the microphone and said, “I don’t have anything to say. I’ll be back when I have something to say,” and sat down. A few months later, Einstein made a major discovery and announced, “Now, I have something to say.”

“I feel like I almost have something to say,” Robinson says. “I’m almost ready to speak. I don’t want to speak until I have something I think is really useful for someone,” he concludes thoughtfully.

For now, Robinson’s actions will speak louder than his words, and he will continue to be the hands of God. As I stand to leave at the close of our interview, I reach for his outstretched hand. Those are some very big hands, indeed.