Meanwhile, Jordan was the best perimeter player of the ’90s. And the second-best was … John Stockton? Clyde Drexler? Grant Hill for that one year? Especially after Magic Johnson retired in 1991, nobody came anywhere close. Instead, Jordan’s era was one where Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and a young Shaquille O’Neal were the dominant forces. Malone and Barkley were the players who beat him out for MVP awards, while Olajuwon pushed Jordan down to third in 1993 and Robinson finished second, third and third at various points. No sane person considered another perimeter player ahead of Jordan on their MVP ballot from 1991 to 1998. In the two years Jordan (mostly) sat out, 193 of the 202 first-place MVP votes went to the bigs I listed above. Just nine went to perimeter players of any stripe. The six bigs I named above were the top six players in the 1995 MVP vote; only then did other perimeter players become a topic.
Grant Hill Rumors
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#0
Grant Hill
Position: -
Born: 10/05/72
Height: 6-8 / 2.03
Weight:225 lbs. / 102.1 kg.
Earnings: $142,836,650 ($199,158,611*)
Born: 10/05/72
Height: 6-8 / 2.03
Weight:225 lbs. / 102.1 kg.
Earnings: $142,836,650 ($199,158,611*)
Who is the one player you model your game after the most? Jalen Harris: I think everybody says they take bits and pieces of everybody’s game, I think that’s true in my case, too. I do really like to watch a lot of Grant Hill though, so I’d say he’s probably the one player I would pick. He was able to attack in so many different ways, whether it’s downhill in transition or off isolations, or getting others involved in pick and roll actions. He was good at getting to his spots in the mid-range and he was able to defend multiple positions. He just had a really good overall package. I’m more of a three-point shooter than he ever was, but other than that I think his overall package was really great.
Grant Hill, the Naismith Hall of Famer who played five of his 18 NBA seasons with the Phoenix Suns, addressed this in an NBA Together Virtual Roundtable that streamed on NBA Twitter and aired on NBA TV this week. “It’s incredibly frustrating when you have a series of incidents where clearly a crime was committed and there is no justice, I think we all – particularly as black men, I know particularly now and the bubble I live in and how fortunate I am because of being in the NBA – there’s not a day that goes by that doesn’t remind me that I’m black,” Hill said.
Hill talked about athletes using their platform to voice issues and concerns, but then used his own to address race relations and touched on the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was shot and killed while jogging through a residential neighborhood Feb. 23 in Brunswick, Ga. “Right now we’re in the midst of a pandemic and sometimes my kids want food at night and I go out to meet the driver on the corner of the cul-de-sac and I am always conscious of I’m a black man when a car is pulling up and will they feel threatened,” Grant said. “Or I am jogging down a street for exercise and approaching a white woman and will she be alarmed or fearful that as a black man I’m a threat.”
It’s safe to say the Chicago Bulls’ rebuilding efforts after the second retirement of Michael Jordan didn’t go very well, but it reportedly wasn’t for lack of ambition. According to NBA veteran Jamal Crawford, who was drafted by the Bulls eighth overall two years after Jordan left the team, general manager Jerry Krause plan to launch the team back into title contention was simple. Sign Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill.
Crawford’s retelling of the plan: My first year and second year, we’re the youngest team in the league, right? And the fans knew, like, “OK, it’s going to be a rebuilding year.” But my rookie year, Jerry thought he was going to get Grant Hill, Tim Duncan and T-Mac. So, obviously, MJ just retired, right? We have all this cap space, and so we have all these rookies. And he was like — go back and look, I guarantee Grant, Tim and T-Mac were all free agents. And Jerry wholeheartedly believed we would get all three of them. Even if we get two of them at the time, boom.
