Now with Suns, former Stanford Cardinal Robin Lopez returns to McKale without his twin brother
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By Bryan Roy
Arizona Daily Wildcat
[The back story: After following around the Lopez twins in New York months prior, Robin returned to Tucson for the Suns fall camp. He still didn't remember who I was.]
Hours away from their life-altering evening, Stanford’s Brook and Robin Lopez mingled outside on a humid summer afternoon in New York City.
Hundreds of fans surrounded the makeshift outdoor stage, where the Lopez twins promoted Wrigley’s chewing gum as the “Double Mint Twins” with their goofy, fun-loving personalities.
After shooting hoops with kids, the twin 7-footers signed autographs and answered questions about growing up and playing college basketball as twins. One pre-teenager even asked who gets more women.
Together, they laughed and embraced the fan interaction candidly, despite the eclipsing presence of an intimidating shadow: Madison Square Garden. Brook and Robin stood hours away from the 2008 NBA Draft on the courtyard of America’s basketball Mecca.
As projected first-round draft selections, both knew time together was limited after spending their entire lifetimes playing alongside each other in Fresno, Calif., for high school and at Stanford for college.
The New Jersey Nets selected Brook 10th overall, and at his ensuing press conference, the question was asked about not playing with Robin. But unlike previous interviews leading up to the Draft, where the lighthearted Brook often joked that Robin “sucked,” or “wasn’t good enough for the NBA,” Brook came to a realization.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It will be strange,” Brook said in a rare case of seriousness. “I don’t know when the last time was. But you know, you pretty much knew it was going to happen, so I’ve been getting ready for that and here it is. I’ll tell you after a year of playing without him.”
Five spots later, NBA commissioner David Stern announced on the stage of the Washington Mutual Theatre that the Phoenix Suns selected Robin 15th overall, solidifying the inevitable.
Now, four months after a nerve-racking draft day, both Lopez twins have returned to the courts for their first NBA training camp – almost 2,500 miles apart.
“You know our generation – we have Facebook, MySpace, we’re texting all the time,” Robin said Tuesday at Suns training camp in McKale Center. “So (keeping in touch) hasn’t really been that big of an issue (with Brook).”
