By admin 
Basketball has always loved military-style terminology. Snipers. Marksmen. Assassins. David Robinson fit that mold perfectly. They called him “The Admiral.”
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It definitely suited Robinson. He led the locker room. The Hall of Fame center did it in the paint the same way.
A nickname like that? It sets certain expectations. You imagine someone who stays calm. Someone who never looks rattled when the stakes are highest.
Dennis Rodman says that wasn’t the case in 1995, though.
The San Antonio Spurs faced Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Finals. Rodman later wrote that Robinson came apart during the series. He shared that account in his 1996 book “Bad As I Wanna Be.”
Robinson’s fate
There are players who keep opponents up at night. Something like that usually starts well before tipoff, and according to Rodman, it was the same with Robinson.
“Before those games,” The Worm recalled, “he looked so f-ing scared in the locker room, he couldn’t stop shaking.”
If Robinson really felt that way, it was not just because of Olajuwon. It came from having to handle the former Rockets star center by himself. Rodman also explained how it got there.
Dennis said Spurs head coach Bob Hill wanted both big men to split the defensive assignment on The Dream. Rodman refused. He believed no coach should put his best defender on the other team’s top scorer. Not that early. He wanted to save himself for the closing stretch. Rodman said it had always been a successful strategy under Chuck Daly with the Detroit Pistons.
Hill still wasn’t buying it.
Rodman also didn’t backpedal.
And Robinson? Left on an island against Olajuwon, he struggled. The fouls kept piling up. The Dream kept scoring. And scoring.
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At one point, Rodman wrote that Robinson realized he was fighting a losing battle. He turned to him for help. The Worm, however, later wrote that he would not help. From there, the five-time NBA champion figured there was nothing left to say.
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A pairing that never worked
Like so often with The Worm, some background is needed.
He, after all, was already drifting from the Spurs by then. Rodman clashed constantly with Hill. He also had issues with a young assistant coach named Gregg Popovich. Dennis later admitted that he was “acting out.”
The two-time DPOY was already so rattled. Maybe the frustration shaped his recollection a little bit.
Robinson, meanwhile, remembered it for what it was. He later praised Olajuwon.
“The man just played as well as I’ve seen anybody play in a long time,” said the 1995 MVP.
And what a performance from The Dream it had been. He averaged 35.3 points, 12.5 rebounds and 5.0 assists in six games during the 1995 Western Conference Finals. Olajuwon also sealed the Rockets’ series win with 39 points, 17 rebounds and five blocks.
As for his feud with Rodman, Robinson later said he was happy once his former teammate was gone. The two had spent two seasons together with the Spurs, but for The Admiral, it never felt like basketball so much as a “zoo.” He also said the Spurs were happier once Dennis was gone. It meant they could focus on the main thing, after all.
Related: “We weren’t the same, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t coexist” – David Robinson reflected on Dennis Rodman and their short-lived Spurs duo
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This story was originally published August 2, 2026 at 3:48 PM.