The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘A gentle soul’: The loss of Stanley ‘Sticks’ Robinson hits Calhoun hard
Jim Calhoun had called to wish Stanley Robinson a happy birthday on July 14 and the two talked again Monday afternoon. Calhoun was helping his former UConn star line up a job in Connecticut.
“I got a call this morning,” he said softly. “Sticks had the job. I had to tell the owner of the company he wouldn’t be coming in.”
This was Wednesday around noon and Calhoun already was four hours deep into calls of condolences. He was heartbroken. Robinson’s mom, Rosa, had called him from Birmingham, Alabama, at 8:30 on Tuesday night not long after she found Robinson
dead at home in his bed in Birmingham.
Stanley Earl Robinson was 32 years old.
His middle school football coach once took a look at his skinny legs and dubbed him “Sticks.” The legs grew more powerful. The name stuck.
By the time he graduated from Huffman High, as Mr. Alabama Basketball, they even put it on his diploma:
Stanley Sticks Robinson.
“He was such a sweet, sweet kid,” Calhoun said. “He broke the reins. We’re not going to get too many kids from Birmingham, Alabama. He made the choice to come up here and was as good an athlete as I ever coached. He could fly the friendly skies. He could shoot it. He had the prototypical big-time pro body. He was a tremendous player. He was a beautiful person.
“He just couldn’t catch that break, the one he needed.”
Calhoun paused for a moment.
“This one hits hard,” he said.
Everyone loved Sticks. Even fans he never met. He had a smile, a wave, a “hi” for everybody. His dunks were crazy. That windmill jam in the six-overtime game against Syracuse at MSG. That halfcourt alleyoop from Jerome Dyson against Texas. That firstround NCAA game against Chattanooga when Sticks ran up 24 points on a dizzying slew of dunks. Putbacks. Alley-oops. Off the break. Braids flying, sticks turned into trampolines, Robinson was a highlight waiting to happen.
“There was something very lovable about Stanley Robinson,” Calhoun said, “The fact that I’ve been answering calls the past four hours is a very good indication. A trainer, a manager, obviously his teammates, (ESPN’s) Rece Davis, who grew up in Birmingham. They all fell in love with Sticks.”
Numbers can tell a part of his story, but only a part. Robinson helped lead UConn to the 2009 Final Four, the one Final Four where the Huskies fell short of a national title. Over four years and 126 games, he scored 1,231 points, pulled in 776 rebounds and had 130 blocks. There was one stretch of 34 consecutive games in which he scored in double figures. He was a part of a whopping 90 wins at UConn, but all along he was fighting uphill.
“Growing up, he always talked about the fact that he didn’t know who his dad was,” Calhoun said. “He had a great mother but didn’t know who his dad was. There were things in
life they just didn’t have. He did a lot coming up here, people in Alabama resented he didn’t play there.
“Here was a kid who was trying to get ahead. He didn’t even know what ahead meant, but he was trying to get ahead. I mean that honestly. He had a child-like quality about him. I don’t mean because he was infantile. He had a good childlike quality. Instead of backtalk or a look if I yelled at him, he’d go, ‘I’m sorry, Coach.’ He could irritate the living hell out of you. Then he’d look at you and smile. He was easy to love.”
One time Calhoun leaned into him and Sticks wasn’t sure what to do. He gave his coach a hug.
And he said the darnedest things. Once, post-game, Sticks meant to say “hats off” to an opponent. He said “Heads off.” When his name came up in conversation, everyone smiled.
“You couldn’t get mad at him,” Calhoun said. “And if you did, it didn’t last long. He was a gentle soul in a harsh world. Too gentle, I think, for this world.”
Calhoun once had sentenced Robinson to the scrap heap. Literally, not figuratively. After his sophomore season, he gave Sticks a choice. He was going to be suspended from the team for the fall semester. He could go home to Alabama. Or he could go to work. He went to work at Prime Materials in Willimantic, stacking metal, stacking plastic. He hadn’t been arrested for drugs or flunked out, but Calhoun needed him to mature in a big way. Be on time. Get to class. Robinson had been homesick. He had two young daughters back home at the time. There was a bout with depression. Still, he never bolted to play down South. He called Calhoun his father figure.
Robinson, with money saved from the $700-a-week
job, returned for the second semester and a Final Four run as a walk-on. He regained his scholarship the next year, although he left UConn three semesters short of a degree. Still, he was a second-round pick of the Orlando Magic and, while he wasn’t Rudy Gay, he looked like he could help an NBA team and make some big money.
“We had worked trying to get him to grow as a person,” Calhoun said. “I thought being outside (working at Prime Materials), he could adjust to the real world. Sticks had learned how to survive as opposed to get ahead. He got that job, put money in the bank, paid for things. I thought that it would become important. And to some degree it did. It allowed him to have a great career for us. It allowed him to be a second-round draft choice. He was going to make the Magic, and with typical Stanley luck ….”
He was waived the last day of 2010 training camp.
“The next year, he’s in the D League averaging a ton a game, tore his (left) Achilles,” Calhoun said.
There was a staph infection. There was an NBA lockout in 2011. There was a torn right Achilles. He bounced from Canada to the Dominican Republic to Iceland and Chile and places in between. The countries mounted but the number of NBA games remained at zero.
“I remember he had a great tournament one year and he got stuck somewhere for 10 days,” Calhoun said. “All the things that could possibly happen to Stanley happened. If we hadn’t talked in three, four weeks, I’d call him to make sure he was OK. He’d play overseas, make limited money, spend it on his family, his mother, his three daughters. It would be all gone and he was looking for the next place. It was
difficult. ‘Sticks, you got to make a statement here.’ ”
When Calhoun took the job to coach St. Joseph in West Hartford, Robinson worked out in the summer with the players. Of course, they loved him. Of course, they’d ask how Sticks was doing. Same when he worked with the kids a couple of summers at the Hoop Dreams camp in Madison. He had that effect on folks.
“No attitude,” Calhoun said. “Just Sticks. He’d always try to sit with my grandkids when they were on the road with us. Such a beautiful kid.
“I think he was indicative of a lot of people in society where it is an everyday struggle. I saw that in his eyes sometimes. He really wanted it. The world sometimes was too hard for him. He didn’t see the brutal side of things. You saw the smile, the wave. I always wanted him to one day work with kids. He would have been marvelous.”
An autopsy was performed Wednesday, the Jefferson County deputy chief coroner said, and the results are pending. No evidence of foul play or trauma was found.
“You always wanted the best for Sticks,” Calhoun said. “I don’t like the word ‘deserve’ things in life. It’s just hard to lose a kid who ran so hard but had such a difficult time getting there. I kept hoping and pushing and hoping he could crack the bubble. As ironic as it was, he was going to start a job up here, get squared away.
“I don’t want to make this overdramatic, but his mother was going to work this morning because she couldn’t afford to lose the four hours as a domestic. She said, ‘He is in a better place.’
“I always wanted a better place for him.”