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Nalod
Posts: 72440
Alba Posts: 155
Joined: 12/24/2003
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USA
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I love the preseason "words" keeping up with a players progress. As a hater, I read into this article some funny stuff and wonder just how immature Nate must have been and drove Larry crazy in his rookie year. The lover side of me hopes the kid really can grow into a player and harness that talent. Just like the other players on the team with an abundance of talent. Words don't mean a thing on this team. Its actions and the resulting wins or losses that count. Print | Close
Knicks' Robinson grows up
Sunday, October 21, 2007
By STEVE ADAMEK
STAFF WRITER
Nate Robinson took the charge, but the official whistled him for a block, and as the often feisty-to-a-fault mini-Knick arose and started to protest the call, a funny thing happened.
He stopped.
Instead of engaging the official in an animated discussion as if he were a 2-year-old clamoring for a later bedtime, Robinson eventually walked away from the potential preseason confrontation earlier this month.
Uncharacteristic behavior, for sure, from a player who once got so under another official's skin that the official told Stephon Marbury he had to serve as a conduit for whatever Robinson wanted to say.
Robinson was that annoying.
Uncharacteristic, too, from the player whose role in fueling last season's Garden brawl with Denver earned him a 10-game suspension.
Surely, one avoided episode, even the few others that have followed, won't stand up as evidence that the 5-foot-9 (at best) Robinson has, figuratively if not literally, grown up as he enters his third NBA season.
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"I'm learning, still," he said. "I'm only 23 years old."
Going on 12, goes the scouting report of someone who, seemingly at least once a week, leaves his parking pass for the team's training site behind and ends up leaving his gussied-up SUV in a place where fire officials might take exception.
He insists, though, he's trying and even if that's debatable, teammate Jamal Crawford remembers how, since entering the NBA at 20, he matured just by osmosis.
"You grow up," said Crawford, now 27. "I'm not the same person I was at 19. Everybody grows up."
Robinson believes his 10-game hiatus, which cost him playing in his hometown of Seattle, helped him grow, as has being the father of two sons.
He insists no one -- family, coaches or teammates -- got after him about his frequent flash points of immaturity. It's just that he's growing out of it.
As a result, Isiah Thomas said, "In practice, every day Nate has been our best player."
A player who's now being groomed to play more point guard, a position that could be vacant if Marbury departs when his contract runs out in two years.
Robinson's peripatetic personality doesn't exactly fit the job description. Yet after a summer of studying film of Steve Nash, Baron Davis and former teammate Steve Francis, he said he's getting a handle on the role, something he demonstrated often running the summer league team.
Still, as Thursday's 0-for-8, one-assist performance against the Nets indicated, he often forces the action -- but it's that force, the energy with which he plays that Thomas doesn't want to lose, just point in a more positive direction.
"His energy is his greatest asset and you ... want to teach him how to use it," the Knicks' president-coach said.
Use it without Robinson losing his cool with officials, opponents or even in the heat of a game.
"It's going to happen over time," Robinson said. "What happened [with] Denver happened. It [stunk] because I really wanted to play in Seattle. That there made me think, 'I've got to chill.' "
"He's still the same Nate," Crawford said, "[but] it's him taking his job more seriously. He sees a certain responsibility."
"I'm trying to train myself," Robinson said. "I just want to play."
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10/22/2007 3:29 PM
