ON A CHILLY April morning, Nathaniel Cornelius Robinson, a man the world once knew as one of the greatest dunkers on the planet, rises before dawn. He drives about 30 minutes west, parks his car, and walks up an unassuming slope to a set of double doors. The sounds of the Seattle suburbs—the swish of the water and sway of the trees—are a soulful lyric. It’s a shame that this early, the robins don’t even wake to sing. Once inside, he goes down a short hallway to a semicircle of 12 chairs, one of which is waiting for him. The beeps and bops are the first familiar tune of the morning. The same song that’s danced around his ears for the past four years.
Once Robinson is in his seat, the needles pierce his forearm in the direction of his blood flow. He leans back and readies his mind for what he’s about to endure. The machines to his right will scrub his blood of toxins for the next four hours, a routine he’s gotten used to as his countdown continues. He wears no robe. There’s no curtain between us. Just Robinson, free, pierced by a few pricks, trying to appear strong in a pair of sweats while the white coats buzz around him. As the machines start to clean his blood, I can see the color in his eyes changing by the second—the vibrance of white replaced by a noxious yellow. His hands, once forceful enough to jam, are hidden away behind a blue-green 12th Man Seahawks blanket. In this hall, Robinson, 40, is the youngest member of the morning crew, a fact he hasn’t taken for granted as the years here have piled on. Dialysis can be ghastly for some patients.
“Like this lady right here?” Robinson says, pointing to an empty chair next to him. “She was just walking the other day. Now she’s in a wheelchair. You gotta count your blessings. Because everything doesn’t pan out for some people. It’s sad.” His voice starts becoming muffled. “I wish I could help them. I wish I could make them feel better in how they feel. There’s another guy that comes in, and he went from walking to a wheelchair to not talking. This shit crazy. I just thank God for each and every day. Because it’s hard to even watch this.”
Though he’d like not to think about it, it’s hard to watch him, too. Seattle has been dazzled by Robinson for the past two decades, from hooping as a Husky at the University of Washington, where fans first witnessed the magic of his five-foot nine-inch frame jumping 40-plus inches into the air, to the end of his professional athletic days on the practice squad with the Seahawks. Not many people knew he played football or even tried out for the team, though he played corner at Washington when basketball wasn’t calling his name.
Robinson became the NBA’s first three-time Slam Dunk champion after winning the contest in 2006, 2009, and 2010.
When he leaped into the NBA in 2005, he was known to heat up in a hurry. Every game, it was like he played with hot sauce in his socks. At the biggest moments of his career, he never ran away and hid. In the playoffs for the Bulls in 2013, he racked up 23 points against Brooklyn in the fourth quarter, forcibly shoved a guard into the scorers table, and ensured overtime after scoring an unorthodox buzzer-beater. There were the nights, the quarters, on the Knicks when Robinson looked like the best guard to don the city’s blue and orange. The nights he had 33 points, 15 assists, nine rebounds on the road against the Clippers; the 45 in 2008 against the Blazers; the 41 in 2009 against the Pacers; putting up 34 against Allen Iverson as a rookie and hitting a buzzer-beater in his face; blocking Yao Ming, one of the biggest men in the NBA. Hell, even the multiple games in which he hauled in ten rebounds in the land of the giants.
Robinson won three dunk contests in four years, defying the limits of his frame to dance where no one his size had gone before, once skying over Spud Webb to win the contest and making commentators rave that “the slam dunk is back in the NBA!” And that was before the Dunk in 2009: the time he dubbed himself “KryptoNate” and leaped over the six-foot-ten Dwight Howard dressed in a Superman cape. His body was a living testament to the idea that anything was possible for anyone, even at the highest levels of pro ball—that the NBA wasn’t purely defined for those tall enough for entry. Robinson had made a life out of doing the impossible, but now life robbed him of the same springs that vaulted him into the spotlight, that made him a modern showman for the game.
He tells me that if he doesn’t get a kidney soon, death is the next door he will walk through.
DURING HIS NBA days, from 2005 to 2015, the signs were there. While he played for the Knicks in his first five seasons, team doctors warned him about his high blood pressure. (Diabetes and high blood pressure are the leading causes of kidney disease.) Robinson said they went so far as to try to stop him from playing if his pressure was too high. He started telling them to stop checking, because he’d play regardless of their prognosis. He was officially diagnosed with kidney disease in 2006, and he’d check into hospitals on the days when his body would crash, often passing out from dehydration and incessant vomiting, only to come out feeling good as new and proceeding with business as usual. The warnings from the doctors that his kidney function was declining, that they would likely fail in his 30s, were something he didn’t believe.
“I felt like I was Superman. I never thought I would get sick,” he tells me, eyes low and voice soft. He was always healthy as a kid, and as far as he knows, high blood pressure doesn’t run in his family. He started taking blood-pressure medication and continued to play through the health setbacks up until his retirement, which he insists had nothing to do with his kidneys but rather with the fact that “the NBA was done with me,” he says, laughing. After leaving the league, he kept on playing professionally around the world for a few years, even winning MVP honors in Venezuela.
In 2018, however, Robinson’s kidneys failed. When this happens, they aren’t able to remove waste and extra fluid from the blood on their own or regulate bodily chemicals, which can be fatal. He delayed treatment, intent on living life on his own terms. Life had other plans for him, though, when two years later, spry and 36 years young, Robinson got sick—worse than he could have imagined. He was in Philly for a basketball tournament for one of his three sons and caught a bad case of Covid. He lost his taste and was plagued by constant headaches, his body aching in a way it never had before. “When I got back home to Seattle, I went straight to the hospital,” he says. “It was bad, bro. I was in the hospital for a week. My body, my insides just… stopped working and shit.”
He thought the worst was over, until the doctors gave him the prognosis.
“They told me I might as well start dialysis today,” he says. “ ‘Your kidneys are working too hard; they’re deteriorating as we speak. The only way you will walk out of here alive is if you start dialysis.’ It was the only thing I had left.”
So he started dialysis. At the time, he was unrecognizable: puffy face, pale skin, blotches around his eyes, swollen hands and feet. He was frail and languid, striking for a man built like a bullet who used to move with the force of a freight train. The transition from his previous life broke his mind into pieces. He isolated himself from his friends and family, unwilling to interact with anyone around.
“I was so angry in the beginning,” he says. “I was so mean.” He no longer knew how to cope. His mind raced constantly, thinking about what could happen to him. When he was awake, he felt like he was dreaming, and when he slept all he had were nightmares. It was affecting the mother of his children, and his kids never had the right answers for him. They’d come into the darkness attempting to pull their father out, only to be met with anger and cusses. He was, essentially, losing his body overnight and unable to recognize himself anymore.
“I didn’t want to bring that darkness to [my family],” Robinson says. “I had a kick in the ass from my lady. She told me they were here to love me, they understood what I was going through, but you can’t be mean to yourself, and you can’t be mean to us. And I didn’t notice it until they called me out on it. Sometimes you need that; you need to know when you’re fuckin’ up. I was acting a certain way where I couldn’t see it.”
For damn near the first two years, the only time Robinson left home was when he came here, right outside Seattle, to the suburban driveway of his kidney center, a slope that’d turn into his church. “Nobody saw me,” he says. “I was in the depths about this shit.” He tries to laugh about it now. “Some days I didn’t want to leave the house; I just didn’t want to do dialysis no more. Some days, I did wanna be here, and do this, until I find a kidney.”
Since they’ve failed, Robinson’s kidneys have been functioning at less than 15 percent of their optimal capacity. The fluids that the machines filter into and out of his body aren’t always a perfect science. Some days he experiences charley-horse-like cramps all over his body after losing too much fluid; other days, violent vomiting and shortness of breath when there’s an excess. He hopes to get on the Washington state kidney-transplant waitlist (and eventually the national list) soon, but even then his chance of receiving a kidney— and his body accepting it—would remain unknown. His concern is the challenge Black people like him face in finding one before their body fully shuts down.
ROBINSON IS IN the middle of a medical calamity facing Black Americans. Black people are three times as likely as white people to develop kidney failure—making up around one third of people with kidney failure in the U.S. despite accounting for only about 14 percent of the total population—with Black men in particular experiencing a higher risk of hospitalization and death. The exact cause of the discrepancy is unknown, though you might chalk it up to a mixture of clinical, socioeconomic, and cultural factors like a lack of access to affordable health care, limited health literacy, and public policy that underinvests in Black communities.
Black patients have also historically experienced longer transplant wait times than their white counterparts. The disparities in Black kidney-transplant recipients have persisted for decades, which experts believe may have to do with a faulty test that measures something called estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). The eGFR test calculates serum-creatinine levels in the body while also taking into account factors like age, sex, height, and weight to measure how well the kidneys filter toxins from the blood. (The higher the eGFR, the better the kidney function.) Back in 1999, researchers found significant differences in creatinine levels between Black people and non-Black people, prompting them to add race to the test even though race is not a biological concept. This led to a “race adjustment” that resulted in higher values for Black folks, cuing doctors to overestimate kidney function in their Black patients and keep them off the transplant lists where they belonged.
A new race-neutral eGFR test has been widely in place since 2021, which has brought about adjusted wait times for thousands of Black patients, but there are still other factors to consider when it comes to receiving a diagnosis in the first place. Black people are less likely to be able to see specialists; depending on where they live, nephrologists may not be accessible. “When you try to control for these [factors] or account for those who have a higher socioeconomic status, we still find African Americans are more likely to get kidney disease, are less likely to see specialists and less likely to get a transplant,” explains Neil Powe, M.D., a leading expert on kidney disease. “It does happen to people just like Nate.”
People like Nate who, regardless of their status as a rich Black athlete, still struggle to find a perfect match. Donor compatibility is primarily based on blood and tissue type and a crossmatching test that determines whether a person’s antibodies will “attack” the kidney, thus rejecting it. And while race and ethnicity are not main factors taken into consideration, people from the same racial or ethnic background are more likely to have matching blood and tissue types. However, living-donor rates among Black populations are low, and Black people still suffer worse outcomes, including transplant failure. The same village propping Robinson up knows the problem well. The owner of a popular barbecue spot in the area shares the dialysis center with Robinson three days per week. Robinson’s own father was on dialysis for a decade until he was blessed with a new kidney recently. “The Black people I know that go through this—[getting a kidney] is always harder for them,” Robinson says. “For some reason, they make it harder for us, bro. To get healthy, to get a kidney, to do anything. Our people go through tough times.”
Ever since Robinson officially announced to the world that he was living with kidney failure, in October 2022, he’s had some help in his kidney search: His Seattle family, like hoopster Jamal Crawford, has continued to spread the word. Reginald Ballard, who played BruhMan on Martin, has connected him to people who can have potential donors vetted more quickly. The Washington Huskies’ official Twitter account tweeted that Robinson needs a kidney from a donor with the blood type A+ or O, with thousands of fans retweeting the post. At this point, he’s hoping to receive a kidney from “family, friends, or a cool-ass fan.”
Robinson dunks over Jared Sullinger during a 2012 NBA game against the Celtics.
“I had a couple of dreams about that shit,” he says, referring to getting a donor. The most recurring involves one of his family members giving up a kidney for him. “It’s scary. Because we both got to go under the knife, and a lot of people don’t make it. I would hate for somebody to give me that kidney and die to go through this. That would hurt me so much. For someone to have to die for me to live.” He turns his face away. “I don’t know if I’m ready for it. In my dreams, my family members give me a kidney, and they all ended up passing away. That kind of fucked with me.”
So what do you do when the odds of living are stacked against you? When it feels like all of your extremities are useless and you’re left with nothing but thoughts and prayers? Each time Robinson saw a victory, like when he noticed his hands and feet were slightly less swollen or he was able to ball on the court for a little, he remembered the road he’s on, the moments that may never come back.
All he could do was humble himself and accept the path in front of him. It was fight or die. No matter how fucked-up it felt inside, seeing others going through this every week changed his perspective. He knew he had plenty he could mope about, but instead he decided to start smiling again. Seeing his own father get a kidney gave him hope for his own future, too—a reminder of why he’s still here. “I learned that I had to count my blessings,” he says. “There are people here with diabetes. They’re blind or have piss bags, or something is wrong with their insides. And for the most part, I’m healthy. So count your blessings. Humble yourself. My [family] kept telling me that I couldn’t stop living.”
After all, his mom always saw him as a fighter. “She knows I’m a fighter,” he says. “She knows that I’m gonna give it my all like anything else. That’s one thing I respect about myself. I’ve never been a quitter. And I ain’t gon’ start now.”
To get him through the days, he’s embraced routine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he goes to dialysis from 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he trains at the gym, mostly working on strength and mobility when he feels up to it. On the good days, when he has energy to get around after dialysis, he picks up his 14-year-old daughter from her basketball and track practices, then he’ll go watch his son Nyale train for a few hours and take him to tutoring. His days now belong to the kids, chauffeuring them from one place to another, taking shifts mentoring whoever needs it for their homework, or even coaching them through late-evening drills. He and his daughter decompress together in the evenings; he picks her brain while she watches anime. The routine got him out of what he likes to call “the Dark Place.”
Robinson trains at a gym in Seattle when he’s feeling good and has the energy. “It was difficult to cope with for the longest time,” Robinson says of his kidney failure diagnosis. “I didn’t know how to react or how to make it seem like this was my life now.”
He’s also kept a fairly strict diet—no processed foods and no fast foods. He started intermittent fasting. He’s pumped in leaner eating—plenty of turkey, salads, and grilled chicken. And the killer: no candies, cakes, or cookies. (Though on occasion, when his sweet tooth nags at him, he does bake himself an apple pie.)
As his face got thinner and his feet stopped swelling, which he credits to his new diet, he felt like he got a piece of his life back that had been left behind in the madness of the past few years. Fruit, he says, now tastes like candy. “What we eat can kill us. It could make you sick or healthy. The real fruit and veggies from the earth can heal you.”
The true delights, however, come from his attempts to remain athletic, to recapture something that he’d lost to time. He figures if he keeps up the nutrition and workouts, he can even get back to dunking. “Man, I can still grab [the] rim! Thank God,” he says, laughing. “I haven’t tried to dunk yet. I feel like if I can continue to work, I can get back to it.” He almost can’t believe he used to cruise among the clouds.
“It was fun being up there, man,” he says, eyes widening for the first time in a few hours. “I really felt like I could fly.”
IN THE DIALYSIS center, Robinson is still snuggled into his 12th Man blanket. He’s telling me again about those first dark years of dialysis. At the time, when Robinson was close to the bottom of the pit, his now-19-year-old son, Nahmier, called out to him. He knew his father couldn’t keep staying home. The athlete inside of him was dormant, begging to be reignited. He invited Robinson to his high school basketball practices to get him out of the house.
By the end of the first few sessions, Robinson couldn’t keep denying the hardwood. It started with him running drills alongside the team. Line after line in agony. Trying to get a feel back for the only thing that hadn’t yet betrayed him: basketball. The kids around the gym were in awe. The OG still had some game to ’im. “I explain it to those kids: Don’t take it for granted,” he says. “This is a good life. You don’t want to be like me, going to dialysis three days a week just to live.”
The kids asked Robinson how he could still be down there on the court with them, ripping through lines and shooting free throws while continuing with his procedures. “Honestly, it is a lot,” he says of the routine he keeps up. “But I didn’t want people to think that I was so sick that I couldn’t do for myself.”
Even with the restrictions, Robinson felt like he was back. “I was so out of shape,” he says. “But I’m enjoying every second of it out there. I’m like a kid in Disneyland. I gotta stick around. I want to stay alive for the next 40 years: be a grandpa, see my kids’ kids, take them to the gym, tell them the stories of when I was in the NBA around ’Bron and Kob’ and all these guys. I gotta fight for it.”
His audacity in the face of despair is moving, particularly because those with kidney failure typically live only five to ten years on dialysis. Many folks have lived for two or three decades, though, and hopefully with Robinson’s tough will and changing fortunes, his life is not lost just yet. His hope is a testament to his heart. Seattle remembers the days he made them feel like they could touch the sky, and maybe he will again.
“I’m gonna be a testimony to somebody,” Robinson says. “My story doesn’t end here.”
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Men’s Health.
