How NBA Hall of Famer David Robinson maximizes his gifts both on and off the court

When David Robinson reported to the San Antonio Spurs in 1989, he found a team that bore little resemblance to the Spurs of today.
The winning culture that would turn the team into a model NBA franchise was not yet present, nor was the discipline that Robinson had grown accustomed to through his years serving at the U.S. Naval Academy.
“Coming from the Naval Academy, everything is so structured and disciplined,” Robinson says. “You’re running by the clock. Every five minutes, you know you have to be here, you have to be here, do this, do that. Then I get to San Antonio and it’s so laid back. Guys are coming to practice and they are relaxing. And I’m thinking, ‘Hey, we’ve got a job to do here. We’re getting paid a lot of money. We’ve got to do this well.’ That’s the attitude I tried to bring to the locker room every day.”
Robinson helped the Spurs win two NBA championships. Along with his coach, Gregg Popovich, and his teammate, Tim Duncan, he laid a foundation for a team that would go on to win three more titles following his retirement from basketball in 2003.
These days, Robinson is using his talent for building strong organizations to lead Admiral Capital Group, a private equity firm he founded with Daniel Bassichis.
Robinson recently spoke at the EY Strategic Growth Forum® about his business endeavors and the lessons he took from his Hall of Fame playing career. Here’s some of what he had to say.
Build a family
“We’ve focused in on real estate; really, value-added real estate, and we’ve raised about $115 million. We bought hotels and are building a family around the country. What we do, basically, out of our business is we take 10 percent out of our returns and we park them with USAA Real Estate Co. So USAA puts in 10 percent of their earnings, we put in 10 percent of ours, and then in those communities where we invest, we usually invest in education and other areas to really support those communities.
“That just was borne out of the years when I played in the NBA and played in San Antonio. A great community; they loved me, they supported me, so we built a school in San Antonio — the Carver Academy, named after George Washington Carver — and took these kids from 4 and 5 years old and took them through 6th grade and got them accelerated to four grades above grade level, then sent them off to high school.
“We turned it into a charter school partnered with IDEA Public Schools, which is a fantastic charter organization, and we’re building 20 schools in San Antonio over the next couple years.”
Embrace great talent
“Either you care about your organization or you don’t. For me, it was a simple deal [when Tim Duncan was drafted by the Spurs]. We’re bringing a guy with great talent. I can’t feel threatened. I have to feel like, ‘Okay, we have to take this talent.’ One of the things I learned from sports, which has really helped me now in my business career, is you’ve got to learn to put people in a position where they can succeed.
“So as soon as Tim came in, I took Tim — I used to go to Colorado in the summertime — I took him with me to Colorado. We trained together for a week and I told him, ‘Look, I’m going to see what skills you have and I’m going to put you in a position where you can, even as a rookie, be successful.’”
Be yourself
“The way you approach the business — your character, your personality — is going to permeate throughout the whole organization. So you have to own that. You have to embrace that and say, ‘Hey, this is who I am. Either you like it or you don’t.’

“With the Spurs, they knew that faith was an important part of who I am. My coach early on was telling me, ‘Don’t kind of bring that stuff into the locker room. Guys don’t really want to hear that stuff. I said, ‘Look, either you like me or you don’t like me. This is who I am and the way I talk. This is what I do.’”