Nate Robinson Talks About His Filipino Roots

Manila might be more than a dozen time zones away from Los Angeles, but people in the Philippines are fully aware of what’s going on with the Lakers as well as the other 29 teams in the league. To put things bluntly, Filipinos are crazy for the NBA.

And by crazy, I mean like what college football is to people in South Bend. Or what soccer is to people in England and what hockey is to folks in Toronto. Get the point? The league has also taken notice of the passion Filipinos have for basketball.

“For us, the issue is continued growth,” NBA commissioner David Stern told the Philippine Daily Inquirer earlier this month. “We try to be the No. 1 or No. 2 sport in every country. The two places where we know we are the No. 1 sport are the Philippines and China.”

Although there has not been any NBA preseason games in the Philippines as of yet, the league has sponsored several promotional tours there. NBA players like Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Gilbert Arenas, Channing Frye and Andre Iguodala have all visited the southeastern Asian country of 92 million people in recent years.

Arenas wrote this in his NBA.com blog in the summer of 2008:

“Then we stopped in Manila. It was a different world. I’ve never seen
fans like that in my life.”

“I was stunned. They made me feel like an NBA star. Any NBA players out there: If you’re having a bad day, or you’re having a bad career, go to Manila. They’ll bring your spirits up, trust me.”

The country’s interest in NBA basketball is amazing considering the fact that they don’t have a player in the league that they can truly identify with. Although Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is half Filipino, there has never been a Philippine-born player in the NBA. Raymond Townsend, who was drafted in the first round of the 1978 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors, was born in America and is half Filipino.

Since Townsend, there hasn’t been anybody with any Filipino blood to play in the NBA – or at least one that was known anyway. But that all changed recently as it was revealed in this YouTube video that the Knicks’ Nate Robinson has some Filipino in him.

Being Filipino myself, naturally this was of interest to me. Before the Knicks played the Raptors on Friday night, I approached Nate in the locker room and asked him if it was true.

“That is true,” Robinson said as he sat at his locker. “I’m like 1/8th, on my momma’s side. But that’s like digging down the line though. It’s like great, great grandparent.”

Looking somewhat surprised, Nate asked me how I found out. I told him about the YouTube clip and how they debated whether that 1/8th was enough to put him on the national team. I also told Robinson about fans in the Philippines and how crazy they are about basketball. Robinson shook his head in amazement and smiled.

Source: Gerald Narciso  | DineMag.com