Twelve years ago, Rumeal Robinson was the best high school player in the state of Massachusetts. Now he's trying to find room in a star-glutted NBA.

by Tom Scocca

For a well-known basketball player, Rumeal Robinson is not, on the eve of the new NBA season, an easy man to find. The fearless point guard who led Cambridge Rindge and Latin to a state title and the University of Michigan to a national championship shows up in the 1997-98 Official NBA Register, right between James Robinson and Dennis Rodman, but with a blank space where his team should be listed. ESPN's Web site lists him with the Portland Trail Blazers, where he ended last season, but the Trail Blazers say he's not there anymore. Rumor has him in the Celtics' training camp, but the Celtics say that was just their summer camp, for rookies and free agents, and he didn't catch on. He moved on from there -- to the Chicago Bulls, the Celtics think. Not so, say the Bulls. Everybody knows the name, but nobody knows where he is.

At last, the NBA's Web site yields a page for Robinson -- again without a team logo, but with a link to the Detroit Pistons' roster. And that's where he turns out to be: staying at the Holiday Inn in Auburn Hills, Michigan, with a nonguaranteed contract, one of 15 players trying for the 12 spots on the Pistons.

Twelve years ago, Rumeal Robinson was hard to miss. Though only six-foot-one, he loomed over the Massachusetts basketball scene as dramatically as had seven-footer Patrick Ewing, who preceded him at Rindge and Latin. The winter of his senior in high school was a Sherman's March to the state crown, a headline-making season that he punctuated by dropping 32 points and a vicious tomahawk dunk -- a dunk still mentioned in hushed tones -- on defending champion Brockton in the championship tournament.

The value of that dunk (or of Robinson's heroics at Michigan) in the Pistons' 1997 training camp is not much. The National Basketball Association makes its own glory. And as the marquee players who guided the league through a decade of success approach the end of their careers -- Michael Jordan, Ewing, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwan, and Karl Malone will all be 35 by season's end -- not everyone is set to inherit the fruits of their greatness. The prospect of their passing has enticed an entire generation of budding players to skip two or three or even all four years of college and have a go at superstardom; the league is awash in them, leaving that much less room for an eighth-year pro.

This is clearly a good time to be young and full of potential in the NBA. Twenty-one-year-old Kevin Garnett, after two pro seasons, just signed a $126 million, six-year contract to stay with the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he'll be teamed up with 20-year-old prodigy Stephon Marbury. Nineteen-year-old Kobe Bryant has parlayed his high school performance into a role as the latest celebrity player for the Los Angeles Lakers. In traditionally slow-to-change Boston, new coach Rick Pitino is rebuilding the Celtics around second-year star Antoine Walker and rookie Ron Mercer, both of whom could still be playing for Pitino at the University of Kentucky if they (and their coach) hadn't skipped out for the big time.

In November, Rumeal Robinson will be 31 years old. By now, it's clear that he is not -- after 336 games in the NBA, and 51 in the Continental Basketball Association -- going to be the next Michael Jordan. The question, in a league ruled by the old and crowded with the young, is whether he'll get a chance to be Rumeal Robinson.

On to part 2

Tom Scocca can be reached at tscocca[a]phx.com.