Rumeal Robinson will forever have a place in college basketball lore. His Michigan Wolverines trailed Seton Hall by one point with three seconds left in the 1989 NCAA championship game, and Robinson was at the free throw line, shooting two.
He made them both, securing the championship for the Wolverines.
Twenty years and a lucrative NBA career later, Robinson is a bankrupted "strip club addict," according to his adoptive brother, Donald Barrows.
Federal prosecutors have charged Robinson with fraud, and at least four creditors have sued him for unpaid bills in Miami-Dade County, where he lives.
He has given up Ducati motorcycles, a Maserati, and a $10,000 fully automatic M16 machine gun, among other things. He bounces between Biscayne Boulevard budget motels, claiming to have "no money" or possessions besides a change of pants, according to a deposition he gave last year.
Robinson's 65-year-old mother, Helen, has given up on her son after she was evicted from the home where she raised him. She claims her son "scammed" her.
"I'm not worried for him," she says, "because he sure as hell wasn't worried about what happened to me."
Robinson made more than $5 million in his NBA career, but blew much of it on strippers. He would spend up to $20,000 a night at a club.
"Not only that, but he'd also have a bunch of the strippers come back to his place, get buck-naked, and clean his house for $500 or $1,000 each," Barrows said.
Comments