It’s hard to describe Stanley Robinson’s basketball career in words because the lasting image of “Sticks,” for anyone who watched him play, is far more evocative.
You can already visualize it, can’t you? You see the point guard standing behind the three-point line, firing a pass to an open space in the general vicinity of the hoop. Then you see that thin 6-foot-9 frame and the #21 jersey burst out of the edge of the TV screen and into view. There’s the magical millisecond where your brain connects the trajectory of the pass with his effortless leap that meets the ball at its highest point. A thunderous slam, one impossible human being bringing all his energy to bear on the unfortunate rim. And the scream, that unforgettable scream of joy, taking the piss out of dozens of opponents who knew that they forever risked being dunked on by Sticks, not that they could avoid it.
Stanley Robinson wasn’t one of the all-time UConn greats. He didn’t win a national title, and he arguably wasn’t the best player on any of the four UConn teams he played on. But he’s one of the most compelling people and players I’ve ever had the privilege of watching, and was by all accounts a humble, well-liked, charming and genuinely nice man. The news of his death today, at age 32, is absolutely gutting both as a UConn fan and classmate, and as a human.
Tributes will be pouring in by those who knew Stanley better, who can speak to his character, personality, and family life better than I can. All I can do is explain why he’s one of my favorite people to ever put on the jersey of my alma mater.
Sticks will always have a place in UConn history simply because his “best-of” highlight reel rivals every other player who’s ever played here. One of the three best UConn videos on the Internet is this 12-minute highlight clip (shoutout TCF) of Stanley yamming on dudes during his four-year run here. To recount a few personal favorites: the insane half-court alley-oop from Jerome Dyson against Texas in 2010 is the most breathtaking play I’ve ever seen in person; his fastbreak windmill dunk in Madison Square Garden in the 6OT game is a forgotten classic in the “best UConn dunks” category; the “Stanley Robinson Show” sequence at the start of the second half against Chattanooga in the 2009 NCAA Tournament is several minutes of utter joy; freshman Sticks dunking and screaming over a bewildered Glen “Big Baby” Davis is a moment that made me laugh in 2007 and still does today. And there’s probably a dozen in that video that I’ve forgotten but which would be a top-10 dunk ever for most college programs.
The knock on Stanley from the fanbase while he was here was that he never “lived up to his potential,” which is true inasmuch as we all saw this 18-year-old kid from Alabama come to Storrs with a five-star rating and insane hops, and we thought he’d be Rudy Gay. He wasn’t Rudy, but all the same he managed to piece together a solidly above-average college career that provided as much pure fun as any other UConn player of the last 15 years.
Robinson struggled as a freshman, a raw kid with talent being asked to play beyond himself on a team of guys who, uh, same. He started to find his footing as a sophomore, shouldering more of the scoring burden while maintaining his considerable abilities as a rebounder and shot-blocker, though that season ended with him getting posterized by Joe Alexander in the Big East Tournament and a tough performance in the upset loss to San Diego in the NCAAs.
Despite that, Sticks was becoming a fan-favorite because, yes, the dunks, but also because there was something magnetic about watching him ball: his joyful exuberance following every dunk, the scrappiness and instinctiveness with which he fought for rebounds, the on-again, off-again saga of his developing jump shot, his discovery of new, weirder ways to finish at the rim from oblique angles.
Then Sticks’ story took a turn. During the summer, Jim Calhoun suspended Robinson from the team, not for academic reasons, or because he had violated the law, or because he was trying to force him out of the program. Calhoun noticed “signs, little things,” the coach told ESPN’s Dana O’Neil in 2008. “He’d be late to study hall or late to practice. He wasn’t always going to class. He just wasn’t focused.” The suspension was an unorthodox attempt to speed-up Robinson’s growth as a person.
It was like something out of a movie — this 20-year-old kid, this 6-foot-9 television star, this no-doubt starter for a national championship contender, working long hours sorting sheet metal at a scrapyard in nearby Willimantic, literally working his way back onto the team. He wasn’t permitted to enroll in classes during the fall of 2008 or practice with his teammates. But Stanley stuck it out, partially out of genuine admiration for Calhoun and for his program, partially out of hope that it would be the key to an NBA future.
(That admiration was certainly mutual: “I’ve lost one of my guys,” Calhoun said in a statement released today. “Stanley was not only an exceptional player for me, but one of the most genuine guys to be around. He was a tremendous tremendous athlete, but what I loved about him the most was his personality and childlike smile. He has left us far too early, but he will never be forgotten.”)
It’s hard not to be inspired by Robinson’s personal story, that of the precociously talented kid overcoming so much and held back only by his own immaturity, challenged (quite publicly) to grow, and meeting that challenge with gusto. He slid back into the lineup for a No. 2-ranked UConn team in December and barely missed a beat.
At this point, let’s be clear: the 2008-09 team was very, very good without Stanley Robinson.
With Stanley Robinson, they became the Death Star.
The 08-09 Huskies will forever be my favorite sports team — an eight-man rotation of incomparable size, speed, reflexes and awareness. A team of players who complemented each other so perfectly, smothering defensively and bruisingly efficient on offense. A chemistry borne out by three years of continuity multiplied by fabulous athletic gifts. At full strength, that team was versatile enough to beat every style of team, whether it was Villanova’s run-and-gun, West Virginia’s junkyard dogs, Louisville’s 40-minutes-of-hell press, Syracuse’s “play a gimmick middle school defense,” and everyone else en route to a 23-1 start. That team imposed its will like no other UConn men’s team since.
And Sticks was a big part of that, even when his numbers didn’t reflect it. You needed your eyes and a body on him at all times, because Stanley constantly lurked for the highlight-reel dunk or the second-chance opportunity. On a team with one of the great shot-blockers in recent college basketball history in Hasheem Thabeet, Sticks was a safety valve capable of swinging over for a hellacious weak-side swat with the quickness.
His playing time ebbed and flowed in December and January; he had 18 and 11 in a dominant win over Providence that elevated UConn to No. 1 in the rankings, then played all of two minutes two nights later as the Huskies walloped a top-five Louisville team. But after Jerome Dyson’s ACL injury in mid-February, the precocious kid with the maturity issue grew up before our very eyes, the not-perfect player on the no-longer-perfect team finding his moment and dominating it in spectacular fashion.
Robinson had four double-doubles in the 12 games UConn played after the Dyson injury, including a really remarkable crowd-killing 19-and-10 in a late February win at top-10 Marquette (seriously, rewatch that game, it’s awesome and an unappreciated late-Calhoun-era classic), and a 28 & 14 virtuoso performance in the six-overtime game at MSG. He went on to be a force of nature in the NCAA Tournament, averaging 14-and-7 during the first four rounds and helping propel the Huskies to the Final Four. We probably didn’t appreciate it enough at the time, but this was Stanley becoming the impact player we always thought he could be.
Ultimately, that team’s run came to an end in the Final Four, and while Stanley followed it up with arguably his best individual season in 2009-10, it was, to say it charitably, an uneven year for the program.
But when I think of Stanley Robinson, I think of that Final Four game in Detroit, one of my very last basketball memories as a UConn student. My friends and I had navigated a 14-hour road trip only to witness our guys fall into a deep hole late against Michigan State. With about a minute left, a small surge pulled UConn back within 74-69.
It was a desperate moment, UConn needing a bucket to keep its championship hopes alive. AJ Price’s runner bounced off the back of the rim, fortuitously into the path of the onrushing freight train wearing #21. Sticks jumped to the moon, like he had so many times before, and in one motion tomahawked the ball with two hands, making it a one-possession game. One last time, in an ultimately futile effort, that famous scream resonated into the ears of the 70,000 fans and the millions watching college basketball’s biggest stage.
It’s a moment lost to time because of how that game ended. But it’s always been a special one to me, my lasting memory of Stanley Robinson — the way he faced long odds, saw his opportunity and rose to the challenge, channeling his uncommon abilities to give me (and many, many others) an irrepressible jolt of electricity that I can feel even now as I write this, 11 years later.
Rest in peace, Stanley. All love to the Robinson family.
