David Robinson the Role Model
From Role Model to Mentor
In my book, Squires to Knights - Mentoring Our Teenage Boys I wrote a chapter titled: From Role Model to Mentor. While role models are great, it’s mentoring that really gets the job done. Role models may never interact with the kids who are watching and learning. Mentoring allows a protege to get inside the mind and heart of his mentor.
David Robinson has gone the extra mile. He is more than just a role model. He’s a mentor. He gets involved with kids beyond the P.R. video clips we see on TV. He founded a school in San Antonio and stays actively involved with the kids. But he also makes clear to the general public why he is who he is.
How to Raise an MVP
From How to Raise an MVP (ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1996)we learn more about this man:
“He is a role model not just because “The Admiral” is basketball’s quickest, most versatile center, but because he neither smokes nor drinks, because he preaches the virtues of church and school and the vice of sex and drugs, because he’s smart and multitalented and the ultimate success story, whether you’re talking backboards, keyboards or college boards.
In an era when so many of us turn to our sports stars only to find them sadly lacking, David Robinson is a true role model.
For all his fame and fortune, David values faith and family ahead of all else.”
David the Christian
And then we hear directly from the Admiral:
“Becoming a Christian has changed by basketball life because it’s given me more of a purpose and determination. When I used to play for myself and my own glory, sometimes it was so much harder to be motivated. Because at what point do you have enough money? At what point do you have enough fame? How do you get over the little aches and pains? How do you find the motivation to get up and work out and push yourself harder and harder and harder? Some people have that drive in them. But I never really had that drive. If I could do things well enough for everybody’s satisfaction, that was enough. Until people pushed me, I never went past that. But God gave me another reason to excel. He gave me something beyond what anyone on Earth has ever given me. God saw in me a perfection, a place to go I could never envision. It was like letting my father down if I didn’t reach for that. I don’t know what my potential is. I don’t know what God has in store for me, but if I don’t go get it, if I don’t push myself toward it, then I have cheated God. There’s no way, when I come before him, that I want him to ask me, “What did you do with what I gave you?” and I have to say, “I buried it in the ground.”
I have an unbelievable responsibility on the basketball floor to honor what God has given me. It’s far more than what I feel toward the fans, and it’s far more than what I feel toward the people who pay me or what I feel even toward my teammates. I have a responsibility to come out here and work, make myself better and better, and not for my glory and honor but for His. So that’s my drive. God doesn’t want wimps. He wants warriors.”
Gotta love it! “God doesn’t want wimps, he wants warriors!”
Posted on February 14th, 2009 by Jeff Purkiss
Filed under: Cultural Issues, Fathering/Mentoring, Guy Kinda Fun
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