Good story about Big Dog.
I know of him as the best Purdue and college player ever, and he will forever be the highest paid rookie in NBA history.
Hope he is doing well now
http://blacktopxchange.com/2014/01/13/dont-know-big-dog-glenn-robinson/
“I had two little fat managers, a pair of twins, who used to outplay him when he was in the fourth or fifth grade,” his high school coach Ron Heflin once told Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman. “He wasn’t very good. People don’t understand how hard that kid worked. He hasn’t always been a polished player.”
Glenn’s confidence in his basketball skills was once so nonexistent that he refused to try out for the 7th grade team. But the small house he shared with his mother was only a long jumper away from the asphalt courts outside of Roosevelt High School, where he spent many hours there working on his game.
“One day we were going through workout drills at practice,” Heflin said in the book Hoosiers: The Fabulous Basketball Life of Indiana by Phillip House. “We call ‘em suicides. I ran them for about forty minutes straight. The rest of the kids were grabbing their stomachs and complaining but he didn’t bend over and he didn’t say nuthin’. I got interested. I said to myself ‘I’m gonna see what it takes to break this guy.’ I couldn’t do it. He always came right back to the starting line. That night I went home and told my wife, ‘I got a special kid here.’”
To earn money, Glenn carried tools and did clean-up work at an air-conditioning/refrigeration shop after-school and on the weekends. When his grades slipped midway through that sophomore season, his mother marched him into the coach’s office.
“She said, ‘Coach Heflin, if his grades drop any more’ – she put her finger up in Glenn’s face – ‘you won’t be playing basketball anymore. Do you understand me Glenn Allen?‘ Here’s this guy towering over his mom and he just says ‘Yeah.’ Total control. You don’t want to cross Christine. I still tease him about it,” Heflin said in Hoosiers.
I know of him as the best Purdue and college player ever, and he will forever be the highest paid rookie in NBA history.
Hope he is doing well now
http://blacktopxchange.com/2014/01/13/dont-know-big-dog-glenn-robinson/
“I had two little fat managers, a pair of twins, who used to outplay him when he was in the fourth or fifth grade,” his high school coach Ron Heflin once told Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman. “He wasn’t very good. People don’t understand how hard that kid worked. He hasn’t always been a polished player.”
Glenn’s confidence in his basketball skills was once so nonexistent that he refused to try out for the 7th grade team. But the small house he shared with his mother was only a long jumper away from the asphalt courts outside of Roosevelt High School, where he spent many hours there working on his game.
“One day we were going through workout drills at practice,” Heflin said in the book Hoosiers: The Fabulous Basketball Life of Indiana by Phillip House. “We call ‘em suicides. I ran them for about forty minutes straight. The rest of the kids were grabbing their stomachs and complaining but he didn’t bend over and he didn’t say nuthin’. I got interested. I said to myself ‘I’m gonna see what it takes to break this guy.’ I couldn’t do it. He always came right back to the starting line. That night I went home and told my wife, ‘I got a special kid here.’”
To earn money, Glenn carried tools and did clean-up work at an air-conditioning/refrigeration shop after-school and on the weekends. When his grades slipped midway through that sophomore season, his mother marched him into the coach’s office.
“She said, ‘Coach Heflin, if his grades drop any more’ – she put her finger up in Glenn’s face – ‘you won’t be playing basketball anymore. Do you understand me Glenn Allen?‘ Here’s this guy towering over his mom and he just says ‘Yeah.’ Total control. You don’t want to cross Christine. I still tease him about it,” Heflin said in Hoosiers.
