Craig Robinson

Early life

Craig Malcolm Robinson was born on April 21, 1962, in Calumet Park, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson, a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian Robinson (née Shields), a secretary at Spiegel's catalog store. Robinson grew up in Chicago's South Shore with his younger sister, Michelle. He learned to read by the age of four at home and skipped the second grade in school. He attended the parochial Mount Carmel High School, graduating in 1979.

When Robinson was considering which college to go to, his father insisted that he attend Princeton University for its Ivy League academics, rather than either the University of Washington or Purdue University, which offered scholarships and major basketball conference play.

Playing career

Robinson was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton University, in 1981–1982 and 1982–1983, leading the league in field goal percentage both years. He is the fourth highest scorer in school history. He graduated in 1983 with a B.A. in Sociology. His senior thesis was on social stratification in prisons. Robinson and former teammate John W. Rogers, Jr. were among those invited to practice with Michael Jordan as he prepared for his comeback.

Robinson was drafted in the fourth round of the 1983 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers, but never played in the league. He played professionally for the Manchester Giants in the British Basketball League for two seasons and returned to the U.S. in 1988 to become an assistant coach at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1990.

Business career

Robinson left basketball partly on the advice of his Princeton coach Pete Carril and pursued a business degree, earning an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1992. Robinson worked in the 1990s as a bond trader. He became a vice president at Continental Illinois Bank and worked there from 1990 to 1992. He was then a vice president, from 1992 to 1999, at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Later, he was a managing director and partner at Loop Capital Markets, a minority-owned boutique investment banking firm.

When Robinson's sister, Michelle, began dating her law firm colleague, Barack Obama, who played basketball recreationally, she asked her brother to play with Obama and give her a character assessment so that she would know whether she could become serious with him. He gave an encouraging report to her. As he later related, "When I played basketball with Barack, he was quietly confident, which means he had good self-esteem without being cocky. He was certainly a team player – he wasn't a pig, he passed when he was supposed to pass, and he cut when he was supposed to cut. To me, that speaks to a lack of selfishness. He had natural leadership ability because he didn't just pass me the ball because he was dating my sister. Whenever a player gets tired, he reverts to the player he truly is. That's how you tell. And we played for hours. That's how I could tell." The story of this pick-up game and of a "test" being passed became a key part of the Obama narrative.

While working in the business world, Robinson kept a hand in basketball by doing area scouting for Princeton and coaching one year at University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. He earned a high six-figure income in his business career, but he eventually decided the financial world had lost its appeal.

Basketball career

Robinson returned to coaching in 1999, making one-tenth his former salary. He was an assistant for six years to Bill Carmody at Northwestern University, where he was an effective recruiter. He then became a head coach at Brown University in 2006, where he ran a variation of the Princeton offense which he learned from Pete Carril during his years at Princeton. In improving a mid-level basketball program, he stressed work ethic, used tough love, and tried to improve the players' vocabulary. Having placed fifth with a strong finish to the season garnered Robinson the Ivy League men's basketball Coach of the Year for the 2006–2007 season by Basketball-U.com. The following year, the Brown Bears finished second in the league, and their 19 wins for the season was a team record.

Robinson assisted his brother-in-law throughout the latter's 2008 presidential campaign, including campaigning for him during the Iowa caucuses and campaigning and giving speeches for him in a number of other states, sometimes combining campaigning with recruiting visits. He introduced his sister Michelle before her speech on August 25, 2008, the first night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which gave him his largest national exposure. He was also on stage following Obama's victory speech in Grant Park after his election as president on November 4, 2008.

On April 7, 2008, Robinson was hired as the Oregon State Beavers' head basketball coach following the team's winless Pacific-10 Conference record and overall 6–25 mark the year before. (Jesse Agel, Robinson's assistant of two years, took over Robinson's former position at Brown.)

Oregon State got off to a fairly good start in Robinson's first year, starting with a 6–6 record; a January 2009 conference win over USC broke a nearly two-year Pac-10 losing streak and earned Robinson a congratulatory call from his brother-in-law, then-President-elect Obama. Robinson continued his tough-love approach, tailored to strengthening each player's weaknesses. After that first win, Robinson's team won another six Pac-10 games, exceeding expectations for his first year on the job, given that his personnel were essentially unchanged from the team's prior year. One key was that the offensive system he installed raised the team's collective field goal percentage almost 10 points. Some commentators felt he was deserving of consideration for the Pac-10 Coach of the Year award, and by late February, Robinson had hopes of the team getting a bid from one of the postseason tournaments. The team was indeed accepted into the 2009 College Basketball Invitational, where it went on to post a 5–1 record and captured its first post-season tournament championship ever with a final series victory over the UTEP Miners. Of the win, Robinson said, "I can't tell you how proud I am of these guys. ... This is a great story for anybody." The Beavers finished with an 18–18 record for the season and had what Rivals.com deemed a top-25 recruiting class as well.

Broadcasting career

On October 7, 2014, ESPN announced the hiring of Robinson as a college basketball analyst. There, he began to work broadcasting games and doing studio work on ESPNU.

After coaching

On July 13, 2020, Robinson was named the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.

Since March 2025, Robinson has hosted a weekly advice podcast called "IMO" alongside his sister, former First Lady Michelle Obama. The show, produced by Obama's Higher Ground Productions, features the siblings offering practical wisdom, relatable childhood anecdotes, and plenty of laughs while answering everyday and existential dilemmas submitted by their listeners. The podcast has featured many prominent guests, including former President Barack Obama, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Personal life

Robinson is the older brother of former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and the brother-in-law of former U.S. President Barack Obama. His marriage to his first wife Janis Robinson ended in divorce in 2000. Robinson has two children from his first marriage, a son Avery (born 1992) and a daughter Leslie (born 1996). Robinson remarried in June 2006 to Kelly Crum. They became parents of sons Austin in 2010 and Aaron in 2012. His daughter Leslie played for the Princeton Tigers women's basketball team as a forward.