Nate Robinson is the kind of player that you love to have on your team. You can always depend on him to play hard and you know that no matter what, he’s always committed to winning.
But there are two sides to Nate Robinson. There’s “Good Nate” and then there’s “Bad Nate.”
Good Nate is the guy that shows up, makes big plays and gets his teammates and the crowd pumped and excited with his energy. Bad Nate is the player who tends to get shot happy -- no matter if he's hot or cold -- and has a tendency to over dribble and go one-on-five.
You never really know which one is going to show up and on some nights, they both make an appearance, like on Wednesday against the Pistons. But it doesn’t matter how you start, it’s how you finish, and when the Bulls needed a spark, it was “Good Nate” to the rescue.
“For me, my biggest asset to the game is energy. That’s something that I always pride myself on doing is playing as hard as I can and bringing the energy no matter if the place is rocking, or the place is dead,” said Robinson who scored 11 points off the bench in the Bulls' 85-82 victory.
“I just had to force the crowd to get out their seats and give us a little boost. It’s that Peter Pan theory: You can’t fly without happy thoughts. For me, I just always think about my kids, even though I’m supposed to be focused on the game. For me, any little happy thought I can get. I just feel like I’m invincible and unstoppable.”
And to the Pistons, that’s what it must’ve seemed like Nate was: invincible and unstoppable. At one point, Robinson scored nine consecutive points to open the fourth quarter and started the ball rolling on what was an improbable comeback for the Bulls.
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Of course, we’d all like to see less of “Bad Nate” whenever possible, but it’s his duality – among other things – that makes him such a special player and is what has earned him the respect of his teammates and his head coach.
“That’s Nate,” said Tom Thibodeau on Robinson leading the Bulls’ comeback charge against Detroit. “He made a lot of big time plays for us. He’s not afraid and I like and respect that about him.”
With Nate Robinson, you learn very quickly that you have to take the "good" with the "bad."
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