Craig Malcolm Robinson (born April 21, 1962) is an American college basketball coach and the current head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University. He was previously the head coach at Brown University. He was a star forward as a player at Princeton University in the early 1980s and a bond trader during the 1990s.
He is the older brother of U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, and the brother-in-law of President of the United States Barack Obama.
Early years[]
He learned to read by the age of four at home, and skipped the second grade in school.[1] He attended the parochial Mount Carmel High School, graduating in 1979.[2]
When he was considering what college to go to, his father insisted that he attend Princeton University for its superior academic reputation, rather than either the University of Washington or Purdue University, which offered scholarships and major conference play.[3]
Playing career[]
Robinson, who stands 6' 6" and played at forward, was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton University, in 1981–1982 and 1982–1983,[3] leading the league in field goal percentage both years.[4] He is the fourth highest scorer in school history.[1] He graduated in 1983 with a B.A. in Sociology.[4] His senior thesis was on social stratification in prisons.[5] Robinson and former teammate John W. Rogers, Jr. were among those invited to practice with Michael Jordan as he prepared for his comeback.[6]
Robinson was drafted in the fourth round of the 1983 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers,[7] but never played in the league. He played professionally for the Manchester Giants in the British Basketball League for two seasons,[3] and returned to the U.S. in 1988 to become an assistant coach at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1990.[4]
Business career, marriage and family[]
He left basketball, partly on the advice of his Princeton coach Pete Carril.[3] He earned an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1992.[4]
His sister Michelle had begun dating a law firm colleague, Barack Obama, who played basketball recreationally; she asked her brother to play with him and give her a character assessment, so that she would know whether she could become serious with him.[8][9] He gave an encouraging report to her.[10][11] As he later related, "When I played basketball with Barack, he was quietly confident, which means he had good self-esteem without being cocky. He was certainly a team player – he wasn't a pig, he passed when he was supposed to pass, and he cut when he was supposed to cut. To me, that speaks to a lack of selfishness. He had natural leadership ability, because he didn't just pass me the ball because he was dating my sister. Whenever a player gets tired, he reverts back to the player he truly is. That's how you tell. And we played for hours. That's how I could tell."[8] The story of this pick-up game and of a 'test' being passed became a key part of the Obama narrative.[8]
Robinson worked in the 1990s as a bond trader. He became a vice president at Continental Bank and worked there from 1990 to 1992.[4][10] He was then a vice president, from 1992 to 1999, at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.[3] Later he was a managing director and partner at Loop Capital Markets, a minority-owned boutique investment banking firm.[3][10]
He kept a hand in basketball, by doing area scouting for Princeton and coaching one year at University of Chicago High School.[3] He earned a high six-figure income in his business career, but eventually decided the financial world had lost its appeal, and found his luxury lifestyle was not enough to save his marriage.[12] By 2000, Robinson was going through a divorce.[3] Robinson has two children from his first marriage, a son Avery (born 1992) and daughter Leslie (born 1996).[13] Robinson remarried in June 2006, to his wife Kelly.[2] They became parents of a son, Austin, in 2010.[14]
Coaching career[]
Robinson returned to coaching in 1999, making one-tenth his former salary.[12] He was an assistant for six years to Bill Carmody at Northwestern University,[7][12] where he was an effective recruiter.[10] He then became a head coach at Brown University in 2006, where he ran a variation of the Princeton offense which he learned from Pete Carril during his years at Princeton. In improving a mid-level basketball program,[9] he stressed work ethic, used tough love, and tried to improve the players' vocabulary.[12] A fifth-place placing with a strong finish to the season garnered Robinson the Ivy League men's basketball Coach of the Year for the 2006-2007 season by Basketball-U.com.[7] The following year, the Brown Bears finished second in the league, and their 19 wins for the season was a team record.[12]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedwomanbehind - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Reynolds, Bill (February 14, 2008). "He’s much more than Obama’s brother-in-law". The Providence Journal. http://www.projo.com/sports/billreynolds/sp_bkc_rencol10_02-10-08_RR8V36O_v13.32c51e2.html. Retrieved November 9, 2008.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Thamel, Pete (February 16, 2007). "Coach With a Link to Obama Has Hope for Brown’s Future". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/sports/ncaabasketball/16brown.html.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Men's Basketball: Craig Robinson". Oregon State Beavers. http://www.osubeavers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=106239&SPID=1954&DB_OEM_ID=4700&ATCLID=1436883&Q_SEASON=2008. Retrieved November 9, 2008. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Category handler/blacklist' not found.Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Category handler/blacklist' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ Solomon, Deborah (April 19, 2010). "The First Coach". The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/magazine/25fob-q4-t.html?scp=1&sq=robinson%20%22a%20game%20of%20character%22&st=cse.
- ↑ Bernstein, Mark F. (December 5, 2001). "Playin’ pickup with His Airness: Alumni helped Michael Jordan back into playing shape". Princeton Alumni Weekly. http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW01-02/06-1205/sports.html. Retrieved December 17, 2008.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Craig Robinson named Ivy League Men's Basketball Coach of the Year by Basketball-U". Brown Bears. March 14, 2007. http://brownbears.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/031407aaa.html. Retrieved November 9, 2008.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Klosterman, Chuck (January 16, 2009). "Craig Robinson: America's First Coach". Esquire. http://www.esquire.com/features/chuck-klostermans-america/obama-basketball-story-0209#ixzz0mW1mcLQy.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Tucker, Eric (March 1, 2007). "Family ties: Brown coach, Barack Obama". Associated Press for The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/mens_basketball/articles/2007/03/01/family_ties_brown_coach_barack_obama/. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Katz, Andy (September 13, 2007). "Brown coach Robinson coaching brother-in-law Obama, too". ESPN. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3009012.
- ↑ Robinson, Craig (December 17, 2008). "Person of the Year 2008: B-Ball with Barack". Time. Time Inc.. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/personoftheyear/article/0,31682,1861543_1865068_1865096,00.html. Retrieved January 7, 2009.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Thamel, Pete (November 8, 2008). "He Helped Elect a President; Now Comes a Harder Job". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/sports/ncaabasketball/09coach.html. Retrieved November 9, 2008.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedrobinsonera - ↑ "Austin Robinson: Obama Nephew Born". The Huffington Post. Associated Press. January 6, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/austin-robinson-obama-nep_n_412897.html. Retrieved February 10, 2010.
See also[]
- Photo Gallery - Photos featuring Craig Robinson
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