Nina Mandell

USA TODAY Sports

NEWARK, Del. - It's 10 PM on a Saturday night and Nate Robinson, one of the most entertaining players under 6-feet ever to wear an NBA uniform, is sitting at a long autograph table with a Sharpie in hand. His D-League team, the Delaware 87ers, had lost 110-99 to the Windy City Bulls in front of 3,076 people. Now, nearly an hour later, he is scribbling on hats, t-shirts and iPhone cases for the 80 or so fans still lingering in the arena.

Some of the fans he speaks with and signs for are too young to know who he is. They know he's one of the team's better players, and, at just 5-foot-9, one of the more interesting to watch. They had just witnessed him score 23 points, grab three rebounds, dish out three assists and make three steals - a typical Robinson performance. But they don't really know, couldn't fathom that in the same line there's a fan holding a card showing Robinson wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey.

When Robinson sees it, he sighs and signs it.

"Good old days," he says, turning it over to examine the back, then the front again. "The good old days, man."

He hands it back.

His reminiscing lasts only a few moments. A line of Boy Scouts reaches Robinson and he asks if they're selling anything as a fundraiser.

They tell him that they sell popcorn, but don't have any at the game.

"You didn't bring the popcorn for us to buy?" he asks, appearing to be half-joking, half actually disappointed. "See, the girls got you beat right now: They had the cookies ready for us."

He assures a dad who overheard the conversation that if they bring popcorn to the next game, he'll buy some.

Robinson is here because he's intent on clawing his way back to the NBA, but he's not treating this as some stopover. After all the turns his career has taken he knows he should also stay in the moment, enjoy where he is.

He's not assuming anything about when he'll get another chance to have the NBA career he thinks he's earned.

***

Robinson won three NBA slam-dunk contest titles and averaged more than 20 minutes, generally coming off the bench, over 11 seasons. Now 32, a man who seemed to defy gravity for a decade is trying to relaunch from here, an arena at the University of Delaware. How did it come to this?

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Robinson last appeared in the NBA in October 2015 with the Pelicans, playing in two games. In March of 2016, he headed to Israel where he played for Hapoel Tel Aviv' before returning home to focus on a new goal: The NFL. In June of 2016, he tried out for his hometown Seattle Seahawks - he'd actually gone to the University of Washington on a football scholarship and started six games at cornerback as a freshman before deciding to focus on basketball - but they never called.

"They didn't need me, I guess," he said. "I wish I would have tried earlier in my career."

After a few months on the sideline, he decided he wanted to play basketball again. "I love the game," Robinson told NBA TV in February shortly after getting picked up by the 87ers. "That's something that I do know about myself is that I just love the game so much that I'll play it wherever. It doesn't matter what level, where around the world, I just want to play and have fun and I love to just be myself when I'm out there."

Robinson said that his first choice was to play in one of the more competitive leagues overseas. The only problem? By the time he decided to pick up his sneakers again, all of the teams he wanted to play on overseas were full. "I was trying to play in the Euro Cup or the Euro League, I wanted to play in the best competition," he said. "I don't want to just go play (for the money), I want to have a good time, I want to enjoy it. I want to challenge myself, I want to compete.

"But for me, the highest level of competition is playing in the NBA, I never wanted to leave. I don't think I got a fair shake in the league over the time I've been there," he said.

Robinson could be mercurial, on and off the court. He was often a streaky player, prone to jarring mistakes that too often offset those astounding feats of athleticism he became known for. And he could drive coaches crazy: He once shot the ball at his own basket with the Knicks. The shot didn't count because time had expired but coach Mike D'Antoni was livid. In 2013, while with the Denver Nuggets, Robinson was ejected from a preseason game for twice hitting Steven Adams.

He knows his reputation is at least part of the reason he's no longer in the NBA.

"Maybe it was due to my immaturity at the beginning, I don't know," he said. "I just felt like if I come to practice on time, all the time, bust my butt, it doesn't matter what a guy does - if he's being loud or whatever they want to label me as, or not taking the game seriously enough. I've been tagged with so many different things I don't know what they say bad about me anymore. But at the end of the day, I've got to answer to God, I don't have to answer to nobody else."

He was especially disappointed that he didn't get to stay with the Bulls after he scored 13.1 points per game in the 2012-13 season.

He thinks every team though, right now, could use him.

"Playoff teams, that could use me right now: The Chicago Bulls for sure, I'm going to say them first because that was one of my favorite places to play," he said. "I was just disappointed they didn't give me a contract that they should have after I helped them get to the playoffs and done everything that I did."

The Knicks, he thinks, could use him too. He spent five seasons there at the start of his career until he fell out of the rotation and demanded a trade in 2010. He ended up in Boston, but remains bitter about how his stint ended; New York Daily News writer Frank Isola reported at the time that team officials were pleased with the trade in part because "the locker room is no longer as loud as it once was."

Robinson appears to believe a different theory as to why things ended the way they did.

"That was the year when LeBron was a free agent, and everybody was trying to get LeBron," he said. "So that messed up everything for me." (Though it's highly unlikely that a backup guard making $4 million a year on an expiring contract was somehow standing in the way of that.)

Robinson has never been shy about touting his own abilities, but it's not as if he's entirely wrong. He was a revelation for the Bulls during their 2013 playoff run, scoring 29 points in the third quarter alone in Game 4 of Round 1 against the Nets (Chicago would win in triple OT). He scored nine of Chicago's final 12 points in Game 1 of the semifinal series with eventual champion Miami - an upset win by the Bulls.

So why did the Bulls pass on bringing him back? "Tom Thibodeau? I just don't know. The GM? I wish I had the answer why Chicago didn't sign me."

Here's at least part of the answer: The Bulls expected to get Derrick Rose, who Robinson had been filling in for, back from injury by the start of next season.

He knows one thing though: The fans there loved him. To them he represented an everyman, the far-too-small player who gave hope to people everywhere long before Steph Curry made them believe hard work and skill could overcome other limitations (even if that's not true). He's the short player on the floor who could somehow fly for a dunk; everyone wants to believe they can do what others tell them that can't do.

And the fans still do love him. And he wants another chance.

***

It's not that Nate Robinson's unhappy.

He swears, again and again, that this is only about the love of the game.

"I'm not a money guy," he said. "If basketball in the NBA was free, I was still play. If the NFL was free, I'd play. Just because I love to play the game. Financially, it's for my family, for my kids. It's not really for me, I don't care about the fame. I would still play. Even if it's soccer, I would play."

His NBA contracts were worth $23 million, but he's not living in a penthouse apartment - or anything else that passes for luxury in southern Delaware. Instead, he spent the season in the housing provided for the players from the team, and eventually lucked out: His roommate, Shawn Long, got called up in March and Robinson had the house to himself.

"Shawn's real quiet, I'm the talkative one," he said. "He goes into his room and closes the door and plays video games. I'm downstairs watching TV, talking to the family."

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Playing for the 87ers gave Robinson a chance to get to know, Mikh McKinney, who he learned was his distant cousin when his grandmother called him after he signed with the 87ers to update him on the family tree: His great-grandmother was McKinney's great-grandmother's sister. "Just seeing him and knowing that he's family, it's a little strange but what a way to meet your cousin for the first time," Robinson said. "Now seeing him, now playing professional ball together, it's a little eerie but it's fun, too."

Robinson also spent his time mentoring players like Russ Smith and the 87ers' other guards; he's integral to their card games and offers guidance on the court.

"We keep score, we have a book of statistics and all kinds of stuff," Smith said. "But Nate's awesome, he taught me how to play."

Robinson also works out two or three times a day.

"I do a little workout in the morning, then I go to get my shots up, then I do boxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays to keep in shape because that's the best conditioning for me," he said. "I do it five days a week. I take Saturday and Sunday off for my kids."

He's changed his diet to be more plant-based and he carries around a plastic carton of water - he tries to drink at least a gallon a day.

He said he normally just cooks fish and vegetables - he's dating a vegetarian now, and like many NBA players, thinks peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a power food.

"I know that I'm getting older, but I want to stay young forever," he said.

Robinson still has the ability to enchant a crowd; the arena announcers repeatedly plugged the Nate Robinson jerseys for sale at the merchandise counter. He's still an effective player, too: at the start of the second quarter, he grabbed a rebound and wove through a sea of defense to score.

On his team's next possession, he hit a jumper. On the possession after that, he spent some time working the officials on behalf of his teammate, who was already heading to the free throw line. A few possessions later, he flew through the air for a steal and took it in for two. Then he scored on the next possession, and the one after that and finally with 7:43 to go in the quarter he hit a 3.

With that, he stuck his arms out behind his shoulders and imitated Superman flying down the court. For a moment, it was easy to forget that he was 32-years-old and hadn't played significant minutes for an NBA team in years.

It was easy to remember that Robinson in one of his most entertaining moments during his NBA career, dunked over a Superman-cape wearing Dwight Howard to win the 2009 Dunk Contest.

But on this night he wasn't in an arena packed with NBA stars or celebrity fans and Howard has switched teams three times since then. Robinson is still capable of the remarkable: In late February, he dribbled through 7-foot-2 Edy Tavares' legs to get to the basket. The moment went viral and served as an announcement to the NBA world that he was back and playing basketball again.

Not that there's much doubt about his ability to make extraordinary plays. He's proven that. What he must show now is that he's also capable of consistently solid play the rest of the time. And he has to give teams a reason to sign him to a 10-day contract over another talented scorer who comes with less baggage and more long-term upside.

A few weeks after promising to buy that popcorn, Robinson was off again. The 87ers missed the playoffs and he agreed to play in Venezuela with Guaros de Lara (as of press time, his agent was waiting for the paperwork to clear.)

This puts him solidly in the ranks of players grinding away to make a living in the game, without anything but the faintest hope of returning to the NBA. It's not the easiest life, especially for players who crave big crowds and marquee matchups.

Asked if he would be cool just playing in the D-League, Robinson said he wasn't totally against it.

"I mean if the pay was a little bit better, I wouldn't mind," he said (D-League players currently earn a maximum of $26,000 per year.) "I just want to play basketball, that's where my heart is and happiness is just being out here playing."

Robinson has always been an underdog, because of his size, but now he wants to prove people wrong about the other labels - loud, malcontent - that have stuck to him. So, yes, he wants more stage, more spotlight, a chance to triumph where everyone will see and marvel and laugh and be awed. He wouldn't be Nate Robinson if he didn't.

And if it never comes? If all that's left is playing mostly for playing's sake?

"It's basketball, so I'm right at home," he said. "Right where I need to be. I get to play the game I love, not necessarily where I want to be.

"I mean, I'm blessed, man."