Grant Hill helped the US win Olympic gold in 1996. He would have returned to the team in 2000 had it not been for an injury. And he was among the university students who won the first “Dream Team” in a race before the 1992 Olympics.
Now, USA Basketball is bringing him back.
Hill will become the managing director of the men’s team after the Tokyo Olympics, US basketball said on Saturday. He will replace Jerry Colangelo, who is retiring, in a move in which a member of the basketball Hall of Fame takes the place of another in the critical role of assembling teams that will compete for gold.
“It is an incredible opportunity, also an incredible challenge,” Hill said on Saturday. “I was fortunate enough to participate in international games – the Pan American Games, of course, the Olympic team – and I have been a fan of the US team since the time of the 1984 Olympic team, when I started to fall in love with basketball. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued, excited and more willing I was to roll up my sleeves and move on with this incredible responsibility. “
Hill’s curriculum is elite. He played 19 seasons in the NBA, was an All-Star seven times – which probably would have been more had it not been for the ankle problems that hindered his career – and made five All-NBA teams. At Duke, he helped the Blue Devils win national championships in 1991 and 1992.
Hill entered the Hall of Fame in 2018 and worked as a college and NBA basketball analyst for Turner Sports for nearly a decade. And he is part of the men’s broadcast team for the men’s Final Four this weekend in Indianapolis, the sixth consecutive year he’s been on that team.
He will remain in broadcasting after taking up his job in basketball in the USA.
“Grant is a proven leader of consequence and character that will continue to help us achieve our twin goals of winning international competitions and representing our country with honor,” said Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US basketball board and retired general. “In making this announcement, I also want to emphasize how much USA Basketball members appreciate Jerry Colangelo for everything he has done for USA Basketball in the past 15 years.”
And Colangelo did a lot.
The position of managing director was created for him in 2005, after the Americans lost three games at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and returned with an extremely disappointing bronze medal. Since then, Colangelo has overseen the process of selecting players and coaches, bringing Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski – who led the U.S. to Olympic gold in 2008, 2012 and 2016 – and now Gregg Popovich of San Antonio to serve as head coaches.
In important competitions with Colangelo as managing director, the American men were 97-4. Colangelo’s departure was not unexpected; the 80-year-old man did not hide his plans to retire after the Tokyo Games, which were postponed a year to this summer because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I intend to spend an incredible time with Jerry, accompany him a little bit this summer, and I think that experience will certainly help as we go along,” said Hill. “He’s an invaluable resource and he’s done a remarkable job, so you can’t help but learn from someone like Jerry.”
No matter what happens in Tokyo, Hill will take over at a busy time. The delay of these Olympics compresses everything; the next Basketball World Cup is two years from now, and the Paris Games are just three years away.
Hill knows that the rest of the world is catching – or has already achieved – US basketball. He predicted that this would happen in 1996, when he was part of the Dream Team II that won gold in Atlanta, and is not alone in the belief that the game found a new international march because of the success of the first Dream Team four years before that.
Hill was a 19-year-old college student when he was brought along with Bobby Hurley, Chris Webber and others to fight the US team that included Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing and others. The university students won 62-54 in that first match; The debate has since escalated over whether U.S. coach Chuck Daly played the game to make it clear that neither team was unbeatable, but there is no debate about how that day in California helped the NBA stars to come together.
“We had a good time,” said Hill. “This experience – having the chance to practice, learn, spend time with arguably the best team ever assembled – was not a formal event with a medal ceremony and the like, but it was certainly a crucial moment for me and my development and my growth as a player. “
Hill’s job that day was to beat the best of US basketball. Your job going forward will be to make sure that doesn’t happen.
He’s already starting to plan.
“The brain is working,” said Hill.