ROCK CHALK 💪🏾
When Thomas Robinson's name was called fifth overall in the draft, he turned and hugged the only family he had left. His 9 year old sister.
Seventeen months earlier, his college coach had asked him who the team should call.
"Coach, you don't get it. There isn't anybody left."
Here is how he got from that night to this one.
He grew up in Washington D.C., raised by his mother, Lisa. He called her before every game.
In January of his sophomore year at Kansas, he was a backup forward for the Kansas Jayhawks. Over the holidays his grandmother passed away. A few weeks later, his grandfather.
Then, late on a Friday night, his phone rang. It was his little sister, 9 years old, calling to tell him their mother was gone.
Within the hour, his teammates, the coaches, and some of the players' mothers were crowded into his apartment.
Bill Self asked him who they should call. That is when Robinson told him there was nobody left.
Self put it simply afterward.
"My heart just broke."
He called the scene in that apartment "the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life."
The next day Kansas played the Texas Longhorns. Robinson asked to play.
Before tip there was a moment of silence for his mother. Marcus Morris stood next to him and cried. Robinson played eight minutes. Two points, five rebounds.
Kansas lost, and a 69 game home winning streak ended. Nobody in that building cared about the streak.
Then everybody showed up for him.
Kansas started the Lisa Robinson Scholarship Fund for his sister. The whole team flew to Washington for the funeral.
Here is how Self explained why it mattered so much.
"Thomas is all she knows."
Even the NCAA made room for Kansas to help. Self said it plainly. "The NCAA has been unbelievable."
Angel Morris, the mother of Marcus and his twin brother Markieff, told Thomas she would look after him and his sister. She meant it. Years later the three of them and Thomas started a foundation together called Family Over Everything.
The next season he became one of the best players in the country. A consensus first team All-American. Nearly 18 points and 12 rebounds a game. He carried Kansas to the national championship game.
Then the draft. The Sacramento Kings took him fifth.
His sister was right there. He grabbed her.
"She just hugged me. And it was the best hug in the world."
Here is the honest part. The pro career did not go the way anybody hoped. He played for six teams in his first five seasons and has spent the years since playing all over the world. He is still playing, most recently in Puerto Rico.
But a 19 year old lost everybody he had in a matter of weeks, and he did not lose his sister.
There was nobody left.
So he became the somebody.
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