Johnny_Blaze_47
05-20-2007, 01:39 AM
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA052007.01C.BKNspurs.robinson.2b097ce.html
The Summer Our Ship Came In: 'The Admiral' made San Antonio his home port and changed the culture of the city
Web Posted: 05/19/2007 10:35 PM CDT
Tom Orsborn
Express-News
It was an odd fit seven stiff envelopes encased in a rotating glass globe hardly the kind of gaming device you would find in a black-tie casino or even at a scout raffle.
Geometrically averse to tumbling, the envelopes stubbornly held sequence for roughly a half-dozen turns, then let go in a series of spills. Finally, an arm reached through the hatch and withdrew the first of the tortured tiles.
San Antonio hasn't been the same since.
Twenty years ago this month, an envelope containing a Spurs logo was the last to be extracted in what was then a fledgling and rather overdone TV drama known as the NBA draft lottery. The honor of being fished out last earned the Spurs the right to the No. 1 pick that year.
The right to draft David Robinson.
It was a moment, many believe, that saved the franchise from relocation.
A moment that helped forge a new future for San Antonio.
"It saved the Spurs," says Henry Cisneros, the city's mayor from 1981-89. "And had we lost the team, you have to assume part of our success AT&T moving its corporate headquarters here, Toyota coming here, the population growth would have been blunted in some way."
Says billionaire businessman and former Spurs owner B.J. "Red" McCombs, "Without the lottery win without David Robinson the franchise would have folded, moved, whatever."
Even those who question the value of a pro sports team to the economic vitality of a city understand how different San Antonio would be today had the Spurs not won the rights to Robinson.
"You have to be careful about granting too much to professional sports in the way of importance to a city's prosperity," says Char Miller, a professor of history at Trinity University. "But it's clear the Spurs have given San Antonio a national presence it wouldn't have otherwise."
Says Cisneros: "I can't even begin to quantify what the Spurs have meant to San Antonio."
It's far easier to quantify what Robinson meant to the Spurs.
Fourteen months after the Spurs signed Robinson, Cisneros successfully waged a campaign for a sales-tax hike used to finance construction of the Alamodome, the team's home from 1993-2002. Public support for the project and interest in the prospect of an NFL team to fill the building was bolstered by the surging interest in the Spurs and Robinson.
Housed in the Alamodome and handsomely blessed with Robinson's skills, the Spurs were still around in 1997 when they employed a bit more lottery luck to land Tim Duncan, the catalyst for NBA titles in 1999, 2003 and 2005. That first championship fueled support for a new arena, and the SBC Center now the AT&T Center became a reality in 2002.
But turn back the clock to 1987. Then give that glass drum one more turn. Had any other envelope lingered longer, the Spurs likely would have left town, leaving the city without a major-league sports team.
"There is no question," Cisneros says. "It was the turning point for the franchise."
And yet it wasn't the final turn of the wheel in the quest to get Robinson into a Spurs uniform.
In a recent interview, Robinson detailed how perilously close he came to not signing with the team following the formalities of the NBA draft that summer.
When Duncan landed in the team's lap a decade later, getting him under contract was a slam-dunk. But the pursuit of Robinson was more like a dribble off the foot a sure-bet turnover that nearly cost the city a staple of its current cultural identity.
The lottery
"It was my first meeting with the Spurs," recalls Robinson as he gazes across a table in a faculty conference room at Carver Academy, the faith-based East Side private school he and his wife, Valerie, founded in 1997 and have funded to the tune of $9 million.
Suddenly, Robinson is back in 1987. The gaze turns into a wide-eyed gawk. As it was then, Robinson is incredulous, even a bit insulted.
The meeting, he says "I left it thinking I was not going to sign here."
That wasn't what Angelo Drossos was bargaining for.
Drossos, then the Spurs chairman and majority owner, was likely the most unpopular man in town in the spring of 1987. During the 1986-87 season, the Spurs posted a 28-54 record, back then the worst in the franchise's first 14 seasons.
Drossos, who died in 1997, never intended to be remembered as the guy who lost David Robinson, the Naval Academy's 7-foot-1 star. It was that way in the weeks leading up to the 1987 NBA lottery, to be held May 17 in New York. Concerned about his image, Drossos insisted Bob Bass, the Spurs' general manager, represent the team.
"I told him, 'Heck, Angelo, I'm going to come back with David Robinson,'" recalls Bass, now retired. "I felt good about going. Angelo felt good about staying."
And just about everybody in San Antonio felt good about the prospects of Robinson changing the Spurs' sagging fortunes. After averaging 28.2 points and 11.8 rebounds as a senior at Navy, Robinson was the draft's undisputed No. 1 prospect.
"I had never seen a big man with the athletic ability he had," Bass says. "He was quick, and he was fast what a quarter-miler he could have been."
It also didn't hurt that Robinson had chosen to remain in the Navy after his sophomore year and had an impeccable reputation. To military-rich San Antonio, he was truly an officer and a gentleman.
"Everybody was impressed with his character," Cisneros recalls. "He seemed like a great fit for the city."
And a great draw for a team badly in need of some sizzle. In addition to having the league's fourth-worst record in 1986-87, the Spurs' average attendance of 8,009 had been a franchise low and nearly 4,000 fewer than their peak of 11,907 in 1978-79.
"The financial situation was not desperate, but the downward spiral was fast," says McCombs, then the club's No. 2 investor behind Drossos. "We were down to fewer season-ticket holders than we had our first year in San Antonio."
Against this depressing backdrop, Bass journeyed to New York confident he would return with the big prize. Shortly before walking to the Equitable Center, where CBS televised the event during halftime of the Boston-Milwaukee playoff game, he called his wife, Pat.
"I guarantee we're going to win it," he told her.
Back then, only seven teams participated in the lottery. The process of determining the winner began with each team representative drawing an envelope out of the lottery drum. The first four envelopes drawn represented the four lottery "losers" the clubs receiving picks four through seven. The team with the best record among the four picked seventh, the second best picked sixth, and so on.
The team whose logo was in the fifth envelope would draft third. The franchise whose logo was in the sixth envelope would receive the second pick. The last envelope drawn revealed the winner of the lottery, the team that would pick first.
After spots four through seven were awarded to the Los Angeles Clippers, Seattle, Sacramento and Cleveland, NBA commissioner David Stern opened an envelope containing the logo of the New Jersey Nets, putting them in the third spot. Bass then looked away as Stern opened the envelope containing the Phoenix Suns' logo, thus giving the Spurs the top pick.
Bass let out a sigh of relief, smiled broadly and banged a fist on the table in front of him.
"Looking away was something I used to do when I played golf and bet on a hole," Bass says. "I'd look away when the other guy would putt. They'd miss every time."
On June 22, the Spurs selected Robinson.
Then the real work began.
"Drafting David was a nonissue," McCombs says. "Signing him was a huge issue."
The options
No chance. That's what most NBA insiders gave the Spurs when it came to signing Robinson.
In any other year, the No. 1 pick would have had no choice but to sign with the team that picked him. But faced with a two-year commitment to the Navy, Robinson had two attractive options:
If the Spurs failed to sign him, he could re-enter the draft the next year. (This point was disputed by the Spurs, who said Robinson would remain their property for at least three years under an obscure league bylaw pertaining to military service.)
If he were drafted a second time and failed to sign, he would become a free agent leaving him free to sign with the highest bidder.
"We had good information," McCombs says, "that at least two clubs and maybe more had made entr้es into David on the basis of, 'Hey, since you are not going to play for two years anyway, just sit it out, and don't sign. After two years, you'll be an unrestricted free agent, and you can pick the city where you want to go.'
"And all the know-it-alls said it wasn't going to be small-market San Antonio."
The smart money was on Robinson bypassing San Antonio and its small media market (then ranked 45th, now 37th) for the riches the Los Angeles Lakers or Boston Celtics could provide.
"The speculation was that there would be some kind of big bidding war, and the system would be manipulated (by one of those teams)," New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton says. "But I also remember being at a press conference David was at and talking with some insiders who said, 'This is not a kid who is out to make every dollar he can get.'"
The Spurs found out soon enough Robinson craved financial security as much as the next 7-footer.
The agent
Much to the Spurs' dismay, Robinson was in no rush to meet after the lottery. He wanted to pick an agent first, and three were in the running Lee Fentress of Washington-based Advantage International; Bob Woolf, who represented Larry Bird; and Donald Dell's ProServ, Inc., whose clients included Michael Jordan.
"David was always very accessible by phone, but he was always like, 'There's no reason for me to come to San Antonio because I haven't decided on an agent yet,'" McCombs says.
"It was frustrating, but we didn't want to say, 'Hey, go get you one, like tomorrow.'"
So the Spurs waited and worried. Their biggest fear was Robinson would pick the Boston-based Woolf, who was pals with Celtics boss Red Auerbach. The Spurs wanted Fentress, who had close ties to Drossos.
"I had known Angelo for some time," Fentress says. "I respected and liked him a lot."
"Lee was a likable guy, and he and my father just hit it off," says John Drossos, Angelo's son. "Part of it was my dad's love for tennis. Lee was a very good tennis player, and my dad was drawn to good tennis players."
On June 17 five days before the draft Robinson had dinner at Fentress' home in Potomac, Md., where he visited with Fentress' wife and four children.
"I've always been a family-oriented type person, and Lee's the same way," Robinson says.
"I talked with a lot of very smart (agents), but smart doesn't always equate to compatible. I liked Lee's personality, his approach. He was very conservative, very low-key, a very intelligent man. I liked Woolf, but I didn't see us as being as compatible."
Robinson announced the next day he was going with Fentress.
"God, that was a relief," McCombs recalls.
"We were like, 'Hey, man, that's beautiful.' It was a break for us. Lee was a straight, above-board, solid guy. He played a huge role in us ultimately getting it done."
"We got lucky," Drossos later said.
The weekend visit
Before the lottery, San Antonio might as well have been Timbuktu to Robinson.
"I knew almost nothing about the city," says Robinson, who grew up in Virginia.
"San Antonio had not been on my radar screen. I had never stepped foot in Texas, and I didn't know anyone from Texas. When (the Spurs) won the lottery, I didn't have any emotion. I looked at some of those teams like Boston and Los Angeles and imagined what it would be like to play in one of those places, but I never really considered San Antonio."
That changed in September when Robinson and his family visited the city on a sun-splashed weekend.
Determined to win over the Robinsons, Drossos arranged for developer Marty Wender's private jet to fly to Washington to pick up Fentress, Robinson's parents and his brother. Next stop was King's Bay, Ga., where Robinson worked as an engineer at a Trident submarine base.
Landing in San Antonio at SunJet Aviation Terminals, Robinson was greeted by a mariachi band, a state senator and about 700 fans. Several carried signs saying, "Say Yes, David."
City leaders literally rolled out the red carpet.
"I was overwhelmed," Robinson says. "I never imagined people were even paying that much attention to me coming to town. I remember I had shorts on my outfit was awful. I remember getting off the plane and thinking, 'Oh, my goodness. I'm not prepared for this.'"
After a limousine whisked them to the St. Anthony Hotel, the Robinsons had a private dinner with team management, coaches and a handful of players. The next morning, Robinson was treated to a helicopter trip over the city, with Cisneros serving as tour guide. The day included a tour of The Dominion where Robinson would eventually buy a home and golf and tennis with Drossos and other team officials.
Through it all, Robinson smiled.
"There were times that weekend when I thought I saw David and his father make eye contact that said, 'This is not bad. We can live with this. This is us,'" Cisneros says. "I felt them getting more and more comfortable."
The whirlwind weekend cost Drossos an estimated $50,000. It nearly turned out to be a down payment on disaster.
The negotiations
San Antonio was a major hit with the Robinsons.
"I liked the city, and so did my parents," Robinson says. "It was very family-oriented, and it fit my personality. I think I could have survived in any city, but this one just happened to fit my personality better than most."
Still, Robinson wanted assurances from the Spurs that they were committed to building a championship team. He wanted assurances that Drossos would provide him with a strong supporting cast.
From information Fentress had acquired about the team's finances, Robinson knew it was possible. But would the notoriously frugal Drossos and the other Spurs investors loosen the purse strings?
"I have to say I was a little skeptical," Robinson says.
"The team was not very good, and the bottom line is nobody wants to go to a bad situation, especially if you have an option. And I had an option. So I felt like they had to really prove to me they wanted to be good. Being the best player on a bad team had no appeal to me."
Robinson's skepticism grew when he and Fentress met with Drossos during their September visit. According to Robinson, Drossos began the conversation by explaining the small-market Spurs couldn't afford to pay high salaries like the clubs in major cities.
The low-ball ploy irked Robinson. He interpreted Drossos' comments as a sign the Spurs lacked the commitment to excellence he sought.
"So then why are you talking to me?" Robinson recalls thinking.
"Isn't this the NBA? If you don't want me, that's OK. It's not going to hurt my feelings. But don't tell me you want me, and then tell me you don't want to pay me."
Robinson's conclusion: "I don't think this is going to work."
Robinson also had a quick reply when Drossos said the Spurs were in danger of being sold or moved.
"He said, 'You really are the key. If we can get you here, we are going to turn this thing around,'" Robinson says. "So I told him, 'Well, if you really think I'm this player that can help you guys turn it around, then you need to pay me.' Angelo got quite upset about that."
Robinson says he left the meeting convinced he would never sign with the Spurs.
"We might as well just go home," he told Fentress. "They really don't want me here."
Looking back, Robinson recalls no disappointment.
"I was like, 'OK. It's on to the next thing. We'll just wait to see who drafts me next year.'"
But Fentress never gave up on the Spurs even though Drossos kept repeating his disinterest in handing out "a Patrick Ewing-type contract," a reference to the record 10-year, $30 million deal the former Georgetown center received from the New York Knicks two years before.
"The Spurs," Fentress says, "really needed David, so he had immense leverage. There were a lot of other teams interested in him. The Lakers really wanted him. So my reaction was to just tell Angelo, 'Well, we'll see. Let's not stake any positions here. Let's be flexible, and we'll work this through.'"
His reluctance to grant Robinson a "Ewing-like contract" wasn't anything out of the ordinary for Drossos, the son of Greek immigrants.
"That was not how Angelo had run a small-market franchise," says attorney Dan Webster, who represented the Spurs while Drossos was majority owner. "And, frankly, had he not been tight with the dollar during those early years, there would not be a franchise here."
None of that mattered to Robinson.
"I understood they were a small-market team and that they had to keep salaries under control," Robinson says. "But you have to find somebody you can believe in and then make a commitment to them."
The turning point, according to John Drossos, came when the Spurs' investors, with Angelo Drossos and McCombs taking the lead, agreed to break the bank to sign Robinson.
"It was probably a much greater amount of money than any of them had originally thought was necessary to make it happen," John Drossos says. "But collectively, they agreed it was the right thing to do. They all agreed, 'Whatever it takes, we have to make sure we get him.'"
"It had to be done," says Dan McCarty, then a Spurs investor. "It was our only chance for survival."
"I don't want to say there was a good-cop, bad-cop thing going on," John Drossos says. "But if there was a bad cop, my dad had to be it, and the other investors played the role of the good cop. I think it played well."
The deal
In late September, Angelo Drossos called Robinson to say the Spurs were prepared to dig deep for his services and build a winner around him.
"He said, 'Look, we'll make some changes. We'll step out on the limb,'" Robinson says. "I felt like, you know what, you make that kind of commitment to me, I'll make that kind of commitment to you. That's when I started thinking maybe I can play down there."
Fentress and Drossos began serious negotiations Oct. 1. The two talked daily on the phone and met once in New York before Fentress and his associate, Jeff Austin, flew to San Antonio for a Nov. 3 meeting with Drossos and McCombs at Drossos' downtown condominium along the San Antonio River.
During the flight, Fentress and Austin discussed strategy.
"Because we had so much leverage, we could have easily pushed them over the brink," Fentress says.
"So we agreed we needed to show some restraint and try to be as gracious as we could. At the same time, we wanted to make sure David didn't suffer from playing in a small market. We wanted to make sure we maximized his position with the Spurs to make up for whatever he would lose in endorsements."
With that in mind, Fentress inserted a unique half-page clause into the proposed 10-year contract. It stipulated that Robinson, provided he met certain statistical standards, would receive the average of the league's top two salaries over the last five years of the deal. The clause also called for Robinson to become an unrestricted free agent should the Spurs choose not to pay that amount.
"Jeff said they would never agree to it," Fentress says. "But I said, 'I'm not so sure they won't.'"
Fentress was right. But the final negotiating session, which lasted roughly three hours, wasn't without drama. Fentress says Drossos stormed out of the room during a disagreement about how the contract would be paid out in the event of Robinson's death or a disabling injury.
"I remember Angelo said, 'That's it. I've had it,'" Fentress says.
"I thought that was a little brinksmanship on Angelo's part, and I remember following him down the steps and saying, 'We can work this out. Come back, Angelo.' I literally had to pull him back up the steps."
The final deal called for Robinson to receive $26.18 million over 10 years, including a $1 million signing bonus and $1 million for each of the two years he would spend in the Navy, an amount that dwarfed his monthly military salary of $1,260.90.
"I told Lee to write down the money he wanted, and I would match it," Drossos later said. "I just asked him to leave me some teeth to eat with. He did, but not many."
Robinson signed the contract Nov. 6. Some 1,500 Spurs fans showed up for a news conference at the Convention Center Arena to announce the signing.
John Drossos says his father never really considered letting Robinson slip away.
"What happened early in the negotiations is typical for a deal like this," John Drossos says. "You are in the genesis of a long process. But my dad was always focused on signing David because he knew it would build a foundation for the team to stay in San Antonio."
Fentress agrees. Most of the credit for getting the deal done, he says, should go to Drossos and McCombs.
"They were risk takers, entrepreneurs," Fentress says. "The bottom line is they were going to make sure David Robinson played for the Spurs and the team remained in San Antonio."
The aftermath
Drossos didn't live to see Robinson gleefully hoist NBA championship trophies in 1999 and 2003. He died at age 68 in 1997, nearly nine years after he sold his majority interest in the team to McCombs for $17 million.
Shortly after McCombs bought the team, he fired Bob Weiss as coach and stunned the NBA by hiring Larry Brown. Along with Brown came two of his assistants from Kansas Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford.
"I doubt very seriously I would have bought the team if we hadn't signed David," McCombs says.
Without McCombs, then, there likely would have been no Popovich or Buford the architects of the Spurs' title teams in the franchise's front office.
Robinson's impact was immediate. Ticket sales soared. The Spurs went from 21-61 in 1988-89 to 56-26 in 1989-90, a league-record 35-game improvement that helped "The Admiral" collect NBA Rookie of the Year honors.
More accolades followed, including a league MVP trophy in 1994-95. When he retired after the 2003 championship, Robinson stood as the Spurs' leader in points, rebounds, blocked shots and steals in the post-NBA-ABA merger era.
But those accomplishments, Miller says, "pale in comparison to the impact Robinson has had on the community as a role model.
"David has taught us how to live," Miller says. "And that's more important than AT&T or Toyota or anything else."
To Robinson, what's important is that he made the right choice.
"I ended up being in a city I love and that really seems to love me," he says. "And that's a real blessing."
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The Summer Our Ship Came In: 'The Admiral' made San Antonio his home port and changed the culture of the city
Web Posted: 05/19/2007 10:35 PM CDT
Tom Orsborn
Express-News
It was an odd fit seven stiff envelopes encased in a rotating glass globe hardly the kind of gaming device you would find in a black-tie casino or even at a scout raffle.
Geometrically averse to tumbling, the envelopes stubbornly held sequence for roughly a half-dozen turns, then let go in a series of spills. Finally, an arm reached through the hatch and withdrew the first of the tortured tiles.
San Antonio hasn't been the same since.
Twenty years ago this month, an envelope containing a Spurs logo was the last to be extracted in what was then a fledgling and rather overdone TV drama known as the NBA draft lottery. The honor of being fished out last earned the Spurs the right to the No. 1 pick that year.
The right to draft David Robinson.
It was a moment, many believe, that saved the franchise from relocation.
A moment that helped forge a new future for San Antonio.
"It saved the Spurs," says Henry Cisneros, the city's mayor from 1981-89. "And had we lost the team, you have to assume part of our success AT&T moving its corporate headquarters here, Toyota coming here, the population growth would have been blunted in some way."
Says billionaire businessman and former Spurs owner B.J. "Red" McCombs, "Without the lottery win without David Robinson the franchise would have folded, moved, whatever."
Even those who question the value of a pro sports team to the economic vitality of a city understand how different San Antonio would be today had the Spurs not won the rights to Robinson.
"You have to be careful about granting too much to professional sports in the way of importance to a city's prosperity," says Char Miller, a professor of history at Trinity University. "But it's clear the Spurs have given San Antonio a national presence it wouldn't have otherwise."
Says Cisneros: "I can't even begin to quantify what the Spurs have meant to San Antonio."
It's far easier to quantify what Robinson meant to the Spurs.
Fourteen months after the Spurs signed Robinson, Cisneros successfully waged a campaign for a sales-tax hike used to finance construction of the Alamodome, the team's home from 1993-2002. Public support for the project and interest in the prospect of an NFL team to fill the building was bolstered by the surging interest in the Spurs and Robinson.
Housed in the Alamodome and handsomely blessed with Robinson's skills, the Spurs were still around in 1997 when they employed a bit more lottery luck to land Tim Duncan, the catalyst for NBA titles in 1999, 2003 and 2005. That first championship fueled support for a new arena, and the SBC Center now the AT&T Center became a reality in 2002.
But turn back the clock to 1987. Then give that glass drum one more turn. Had any other envelope lingered longer, the Spurs likely would have left town, leaving the city without a major-league sports team.
"There is no question," Cisneros says. "It was the turning point for the franchise."
And yet it wasn't the final turn of the wheel in the quest to get Robinson into a Spurs uniform.
In a recent interview, Robinson detailed how perilously close he came to not signing with the team following the formalities of the NBA draft that summer.
When Duncan landed in the team's lap a decade later, getting him under contract was a slam-dunk. But the pursuit of Robinson was more like a dribble off the foot a sure-bet turnover that nearly cost the city a staple of its current cultural identity.
The lottery
"It was my first meeting with the Spurs," recalls Robinson as he gazes across a table in a faculty conference room at Carver Academy, the faith-based East Side private school he and his wife, Valerie, founded in 1997 and have funded to the tune of $9 million.
Suddenly, Robinson is back in 1987. The gaze turns into a wide-eyed gawk. As it was then, Robinson is incredulous, even a bit insulted.
The meeting, he says "I left it thinking I was not going to sign here."
That wasn't what Angelo Drossos was bargaining for.
Drossos, then the Spurs chairman and majority owner, was likely the most unpopular man in town in the spring of 1987. During the 1986-87 season, the Spurs posted a 28-54 record, back then the worst in the franchise's first 14 seasons.
Drossos, who died in 1997, never intended to be remembered as the guy who lost David Robinson, the Naval Academy's 7-foot-1 star. It was that way in the weeks leading up to the 1987 NBA lottery, to be held May 17 in New York. Concerned about his image, Drossos insisted Bob Bass, the Spurs' general manager, represent the team.
"I told him, 'Heck, Angelo, I'm going to come back with David Robinson,'" recalls Bass, now retired. "I felt good about going. Angelo felt good about staying."
And just about everybody in San Antonio felt good about the prospects of Robinson changing the Spurs' sagging fortunes. After averaging 28.2 points and 11.8 rebounds as a senior at Navy, Robinson was the draft's undisputed No. 1 prospect.
"I had never seen a big man with the athletic ability he had," Bass says. "He was quick, and he was fast what a quarter-miler he could have been."
It also didn't hurt that Robinson had chosen to remain in the Navy after his sophomore year and had an impeccable reputation. To military-rich San Antonio, he was truly an officer and a gentleman.
"Everybody was impressed with his character," Cisneros recalls. "He seemed like a great fit for the city."
And a great draw for a team badly in need of some sizzle. In addition to having the league's fourth-worst record in 1986-87, the Spurs' average attendance of 8,009 had been a franchise low and nearly 4,000 fewer than their peak of 11,907 in 1978-79.
"The financial situation was not desperate, but the downward spiral was fast," says McCombs, then the club's No. 2 investor behind Drossos. "We were down to fewer season-ticket holders than we had our first year in San Antonio."
Against this depressing backdrop, Bass journeyed to New York confident he would return with the big prize. Shortly before walking to the Equitable Center, where CBS televised the event during halftime of the Boston-Milwaukee playoff game, he called his wife, Pat.
"I guarantee we're going to win it," he told her.
Back then, only seven teams participated in the lottery. The process of determining the winner began with each team representative drawing an envelope out of the lottery drum. The first four envelopes drawn represented the four lottery "losers" the clubs receiving picks four through seven. The team with the best record among the four picked seventh, the second best picked sixth, and so on.
The team whose logo was in the fifth envelope would draft third. The franchise whose logo was in the sixth envelope would receive the second pick. The last envelope drawn revealed the winner of the lottery, the team that would pick first.
After spots four through seven were awarded to the Los Angeles Clippers, Seattle, Sacramento and Cleveland, NBA commissioner David Stern opened an envelope containing the logo of the New Jersey Nets, putting them in the third spot. Bass then looked away as Stern opened the envelope containing the Phoenix Suns' logo, thus giving the Spurs the top pick.
Bass let out a sigh of relief, smiled broadly and banged a fist on the table in front of him.
"Looking away was something I used to do when I played golf and bet on a hole," Bass says. "I'd look away when the other guy would putt. They'd miss every time."
On June 22, the Spurs selected Robinson.
Then the real work began.
"Drafting David was a nonissue," McCombs says. "Signing him was a huge issue."
The options
No chance. That's what most NBA insiders gave the Spurs when it came to signing Robinson.
In any other year, the No. 1 pick would have had no choice but to sign with the team that picked him. But faced with a two-year commitment to the Navy, Robinson had two attractive options:
If the Spurs failed to sign him, he could re-enter the draft the next year. (This point was disputed by the Spurs, who said Robinson would remain their property for at least three years under an obscure league bylaw pertaining to military service.)
If he were drafted a second time and failed to sign, he would become a free agent leaving him free to sign with the highest bidder.
"We had good information," McCombs says, "that at least two clubs and maybe more had made entr้es into David on the basis of, 'Hey, since you are not going to play for two years anyway, just sit it out, and don't sign. After two years, you'll be an unrestricted free agent, and you can pick the city where you want to go.'
"And all the know-it-alls said it wasn't going to be small-market San Antonio."
The smart money was on Robinson bypassing San Antonio and its small media market (then ranked 45th, now 37th) for the riches the Los Angeles Lakers or Boston Celtics could provide.
"The speculation was that there would be some kind of big bidding war, and the system would be manipulated (by one of those teams)," New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton says. "But I also remember being at a press conference David was at and talking with some insiders who said, 'This is not a kid who is out to make every dollar he can get.'"
The Spurs found out soon enough Robinson craved financial security as much as the next 7-footer.
The agent
Much to the Spurs' dismay, Robinson was in no rush to meet after the lottery. He wanted to pick an agent first, and three were in the running Lee Fentress of Washington-based Advantage International; Bob Woolf, who represented Larry Bird; and Donald Dell's ProServ, Inc., whose clients included Michael Jordan.
"David was always very accessible by phone, but he was always like, 'There's no reason for me to come to San Antonio because I haven't decided on an agent yet,'" McCombs says.
"It was frustrating, but we didn't want to say, 'Hey, go get you one, like tomorrow.'"
So the Spurs waited and worried. Their biggest fear was Robinson would pick the Boston-based Woolf, who was pals with Celtics boss Red Auerbach. The Spurs wanted Fentress, who had close ties to Drossos.
"I had known Angelo for some time," Fentress says. "I respected and liked him a lot."
"Lee was a likable guy, and he and my father just hit it off," says John Drossos, Angelo's son. "Part of it was my dad's love for tennis. Lee was a very good tennis player, and my dad was drawn to good tennis players."
On June 17 five days before the draft Robinson had dinner at Fentress' home in Potomac, Md., where he visited with Fentress' wife and four children.
"I've always been a family-oriented type person, and Lee's the same way," Robinson says.
"I talked with a lot of very smart (agents), but smart doesn't always equate to compatible. I liked Lee's personality, his approach. He was very conservative, very low-key, a very intelligent man. I liked Woolf, but I didn't see us as being as compatible."
Robinson announced the next day he was going with Fentress.
"God, that was a relief," McCombs recalls.
"We were like, 'Hey, man, that's beautiful.' It was a break for us. Lee was a straight, above-board, solid guy. He played a huge role in us ultimately getting it done."
"We got lucky," Drossos later said.
The weekend visit
Before the lottery, San Antonio might as well have been Timbuktu to Robinson.
"I knew almost nothing about the city," says Robinson, who grew up in Virginia.
"San Antonio had not been on my radar screen. I had never stepped foot in Texas, and I didn't know anyone from Texas. When (the Spurs) won the lottery, I didn't have any emotion. I looked at some of those teams like Boston and Los Angeles and imagined what it would be like to play in one of those places, but I never really considered San Antonio."
That changed in September when Robinson and his family visited the city on a sun-splashed weekend.
Determined to win over the Robinsons, Drossos arranged for developer Marty Wender's private jet to fly to Washington to pick up Fentress, Robinson's parents and his brother. Next stop was King's Bay, Ga., where Robinson worked as an engineer at a Trident submarine base.
Landing in San Antonio at SunJet Aviation Terminals, Robinson was greeted by a mariachi band, a state senator and about 700 fans. Several carried signs saying, "Say Yes, David."
City leaders literally rolled out the red carpet.
"I was overwhelmed," Robinson says. "I never imagined people were even paying that much attention to me coming to town. I remember I had shorts on my outfit was awful. I remember getting off the plane and thinking, 'Oh, my goodness. I'm not prepared for this.'"
After a limousine whisked them to the St. Anthony Hotel, the Robinsons had a private dinner with team management, coaches and a handful of players. The next morning, Robinson was treated to a helicopter trip over the city, with Cisneros serving as tour guide. The day included a tour of The Dominion where Robinson would eventually buy a home and golf and tennis with Drossos and other team officials.
Through it all, Robinson smiled.
"There were times that weekend when I thought I saw David and his father make eye contact that said, 'This is not bad. We can live with this. This is us,'" Cisneros says. "I felt them getting more and more comfortable."
The whirlwind weekend cost Drossos an estimated $50,000. It nearly turned out to be a down payment on disaster.
The negotiations
San Antonio was a major hit with the Robinsons.
"I liked the city, and so did my parents," Robinson says. "It was very family-oriented, and it fit my personality. I think I could have survived in any city, but this one just happened to fit my personality better than most."
Still, Robinson wanted assurances from the Spurs that they were committed to building a championship team. He wanted assurances that Drossos would provide him with a strong supporting cast.
From information Fentress had acquired about the team's finances, Robinson knew it was possible. But would the notoriously frugal Drossos and the other Spurs investors loosen the purse strings?
"I have to say I was a little skeptical," Robinson says.
"The team was not very good, and the bottom line is nobody wants to go to a bad situation, especially if you have an option. And I had an option. So I felt like they had to really prove to me they wanted to be good. Being the best player on a bad team had no appeal to me."
Robinson's skepticism grew when he and Fentress met with Drossos during their September visit. According to Robinson, Drossos began the conversation by explaining the small-market Spurs couldn't afford to pay high salaries like the clubs in major cities.
The low-ball ploy irked Robinson. He interpreted Drossos' comments as a sign the Spurs lacked the commitment to excellence he sought.
"So then why are you talking to me?" Robinson recalls thinking.
"Isn't this the NBA? If you don't want me, that's OK. It's not going to hurt my feelings. But don't tell me you want me, and then tell me you don't want to pay me."
Robinson's conclusion: "I don't think this is going to work."
Robinson also had a quick reply when Drossos said the Spurs were in danger of being sold or moved.
"He said, 'You really are the key. If we can get you here, we are going to turn this thing around,'" Robinson says. "So I told him, 'Well, if you really think I'm this player that can help you guys turn it around, then you need to pay me.' Angelo got quite upset about that."
Robinson says he left the meeting convinced he would never sign with the Spurs.
"We might as well just go home," he told Fentress. "They really don't want me here."
Looking back, Robinson recalls no disappointment.
"I was like, 'OK. It's on to the next thing. We'll just wait to see who drafts me next year.'"
But Fentress never gave up on the Spurs even though Drossos kept repeating his disinterest in handing out "a Patrick Ewing-type contract," a reference to the record 10-year, $30 million deal the former Georgetown center received from the New York Knicks two years before.
"The Spurs," Fentress says, "really needed David, so he had immense leverage. There were a lot of other teams interested in him. The Lakers really wanted him. So my reaction was to just tell Angelo, 'Well, we'll see. Let's not stake any positions here. Let's be flexible, and we'll work this through.'"
His reluctance to grant Robinson a "Ewing-like contract" wasn't anything out of the ordinary for Drossos, the son of Greek immigrants.
"That was not how Angelo had run a small-market franchise," says attorney Dan Webster, who represented the Spurs while Drossos was majority owner. "And, frankly, had he not been tight with the dollar during those early years, there would not be a franchise here."
None of that mattered to Robinson.
"I understood they were a small-market team and that they had to keep salaries under control," Robinson says. "But you have to find somebody you can believe in and then make a commitment to them."
The turning point, according to John Drossos, came when the Spurs' investors, with Angelo Drossos and McCombs taking the lead, agreed to break the bank to sign Robinson.
"It was probably a much greater amount of money than any of them had originally thought was necessary to make it happen," John Drossos says. "But collectively, they agreed it was the right thing to do. They all agreed, 'Whatever it takes, we have to make sure we get him.'"
"It had to be done," says Dan McCarty, then a Spurs investor. "It was our only chance for survival."
"I don't want to say there was a good-cop, bad-cop thing going on," John Drossos says. "But if there was a bad cop, my dad had to be it, and the other investors played the role of the good cop. I think it played well."
The deal
In late September, Angelo Drossos called Robinson to say the Spurs were prepared to dig deep for his services and build a winner around him.
"He said, 'Look, we'll make some changes. We'll step out on the limb,'" Robinson says. "I felt like, you know what, you make that kind of commitment to me, I'll make that kind of commitment to you. That's when I started thinking maybe I can play down there."
Fentress and Drossos began serious negotiations Oct. 1. The two talked daily on the phone and met once in New York before Fentress and his associate, Jeff Austin, flew to San Antonio for a Nov. 3 meeting with Drossos and McCombs at Drossos' downtown condominium along the San Antonio River.
During the flight, Fentress and Austin discussed strategy.
"Because we had so much leverage, we could have easily pushed them over the brink," Fentress says.
"So we agreed we needed to show some restraint and try to be as gracious as we could. At the same time, we wanted to make sure David didn't suffer from playing in a small market. We wanted to make sure we maximized his position with the Spurs to make up for whatever he would lose in endorsements."
With that in mind, Fentress inserted a unique half-page clause into the proposed 10-year contract. It stipulated that Robinson, provided he met certain statistical standards, would receive the average of the league's top two salaries over the last five years of the deal. The clause also called for Robinson to become an unrestricted free agent should the Spurs choose not to pay that amount.
"Jeff said they would never agree to it," Fentress says. "But I said, 'I'm not so sure they won't.'"
Fentress was right. But the final negotiating session, which lasted roughly three hours, wasn't without drama. Fentress says Drossos stormed out of the room during a disagreement about how the contract would be paid out in the event of Robinson's death or a disabling injury.
"I remember Angelo said, 'That's it. I've had it,'" Fentress says.
"I thought that was a little brinksmanship on Angelo's part, and I remember following him down the steps and saying, 'We can work this out. Come back, Angelo.' I literally had to pull him back up the steps."
The final deal called for Robinson to receive $26.18 million over 10 years, including a $1 million signing bonus and $1 million for each of the two years he would spend in the Navy, an amount that dwarfed his monthly military salary of $1,260.90.
"I told Lee to write down the money he wanted, and I would match it," Drossos later said. "I just asked him to leave me some teeth to eat with. He did, but not many."
Robinson signed the contract Nov. 6. Some 1,500 Spurs fans showed up for a news conference at the Convention Center Arena to announce the signing.
John Drossos says his father never really considered letting Robinson slip away.
"What happened early in the negotiations is typical for a deal like this," John Drossos says. "You are in the genesis of a long process. But my dad was always focused on signing David because he knew it would build a foundation for the team to stay in San Antonio."
Fentress agrees. Most of the credit for getting the deal done, he says, should go to Drossos and McCombs.
"They were risk takers, entrepreneurs," Fentress says. "The bottom line is they were going to make sure David Robinson played for the Spurs and the team remained in San Antonio."
The aftermath
Drossos didn't live to see Robinson gleefully hoist NBA championship trophies in 1999 and 2003. He died at age 68 in 1997, nearly nine years after he sold his majority interest in the team to McCombs for $17 million.
Shortly after McCombs bought the team, he fired Bob Weiss as coach and stunned the NBA by hiring Larry Brown. Along with Brown came two of his assistants from Kansas Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford.
"I doubt very seriously I would have bought the team if we hadn't signed David," McCombs says.
Without McCombs, then, there likely would have been no Popovich or Buford the architects of the Spurs' title teams in the franchise's front office.
Robinson's impact was immediate. Ticket sales soared. The Spurs went from 21-61 in 1988-89 to 56-26 in 1989-90, a league-record 35-game improvement that helped "The Admiral" collect NBA Rookie of the Year honors.
More accolades followed, including a league MVP trophy in 1994-95. When he retired after the 2003 championship, Robinson stood as the Spurs' leader in points, rebounds, blocked shots and steals in the post-NBA-ABA merger era.
But those accomplishments, Miller says, "pale in comparison to the impact Robinson has had on the community as a role model.
"David has taught us how to live," Miller says. "And that's more important than AT&T or Toyota or anything else."
To Robinson, what's important is that he made the right choice.
"I ended up being in a city I love and that really seems to love me," he says. "And that's a real blessing."
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