New team, same results for ex-Spurs guard Hill

Walking across the stage at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on draft night last June, Kawhi Leonard fitted an Indiana Pacers cap carefully over his braids, then shook hands with commissioner David Stern as photographers captured his first moments as an NBA player.

Within minutes he got an early lesson in the business of the league. He could keep the blue and gold Pacers cap as a souvenir if he liked, but his rookie uniform would be silver and black.

The Pacers had used their 15th pick in the first round to select him for the Spurs, the small forward from San Diego State was told. Leonard was the biggest piece of a package sent by the Pacers so they could acquire George Hill, a combo guard who had become one of the most popular Spurs, both to his coach and the team’s fans.

The stoic Leonard, 20 years old at the time, accepted the news with a shoulder shrug, determined to stay in a moment he described as “living the dream.”

For Hill, that moment was a nightmare, even if it meant returning to Indianapolis, where he had been a high school and college star. Hill could think only of his three seasons with the Spurs, during which he had gone from a relative unknown out of a mid-major college to a key reserve on a 60-win team.

Embracing San Antonio as if he had been born in the shadow of the Alamo, he envisioned a long career as a Spur.

The player Gregg Popovich called “Indiana George” returns tonight to ATT Center, playing much the same role for the Pacers he had with the Spurs: a backup at both guard spots and defensive stopper whose true value defies quantification.

Indicative of the respect he had earned from a coach not given to sentimentality, Hill got a phone call from Popovich alerting him about the draft night trade hours before it was announced.

The conversation was difficult on both ends.

“Emotions were bare,” Hill recalled. “Coach Pop explained the nature of the business, which I respected, and explained how difficult the decision was and how bad he felt. At the time, he said it was something he had to do for the betterment of the team.

“It was difficult to swallow, but from Day 1 he had been honest with me. It meant a lot that he had the respect to give me a heads-up.”

Popovich described the difficulty of the decision to send Hill to Indiana.

“On a scale of one to 10,” he said, “it was a 10 and a half.”

Fully recovered from a Jan. 31 chip fracture of the left ankle that sidelined him for 12 games, Hill enters tonight averaging 9.4 points on 46 percent shooting and 40.4 percent 3-point shooting for a Pacers team with the fourth-best record (30-20) in the Eastern Conference.

That he is playing well in an important role with his hometown team offers some solace for Popovich.

“We’re thrilled for him,” Popovich said. “I want nothing but for him to be successful, and our players want the same for him, and he has been.

“One thing that gave us a little bit of peace about it is that we were sending him back home. He’s back in his hometown, and he was doing some great community work there, just like he was here. It made it a little more palatable, knowing he was going back home.”

No Spur misses Hill more than DeJuan Blair, the starting center who found a best friend in the locker next to his at the ATT Center.

“I was in a cab in New York City when I heard the news,” Blair said. “I was devastated. I said a few curse words.”

Before tipoff tonight, Hill will share a hug with Blair and the other teammates left from his three seasons in black and silver.

“It’s going to be kind of weird,” Hill said. “You know I’m going to have fun out there. It will be good to see everyone again and see everyone smile, but emotional because you miss those guys. You’ve created a bond with them, but now you understand it’s a business, so you play it like a regular game and have fun.”

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Ex-Spurs guard returns to S.A. for game

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Five months after being traded to the Indiana Pacers, George Hill was back on a San Antonio basketball court on Sunday afternoon, back in a black No. 3 jersey.

Except it wasn’t a Spurs jersey. And it wasn’t the ATT Center.

With the NBA lockout still in full bloom, Hill was in town to play point guard for the Texas Fuel.

“I know San Antonio misses some basketball,” said Hill, one of the Spurs’ most popular players in his three seasons with the team. “I wanted to give the fans something to do during the lockout.”

Haven’t heard of the Texas Fuel? You’re likely not alone. The Fuel is the name given to the American Basketball Association team that plays at the Alamo Convocation Center.

They are a professional team, to be sure, but about as far a leap from the NBA as the Alamo Convocation Center is from the currently unoccupied basketball gym the Spurs call home.

The ball — like the iconic sphere used in the ABA of the 1970s — is red, white and blue. A DJ blasts music while the ball is in play (sample playlist selection: Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.”) About 500 people were on hand Sunday to watch the Hill-led Fuel beat the Hill Country Stampede — a team, incidentally, based out of Big Spring — 113-93 in the team’s opener.

“It’s not the Spurs,” Hill said. “But it’s still basketball.”

Or, as Fuel officials are fond of saying: “It’s the only game in town.”

The Fuel’s roster is filled mostly with small-college castoffs holding on to a dream. Hill was the only player in uniform Sunday to have appeared in the NBA, and likely the only one who ever will.

The team’s leading scorer was De’Andre Hall, a 6-foot-7 combo forward who played collegiately at Texas Southern. He had 34 points and 11 rebounds.

More content to facilitate than score, Hill recorded his first pro triple-double with 11 points, 11 rebounds and 17 assists.

“I was just trying to get my feet wet again and get up and down the floor,” he said. “At the same time, it’s all for fun. I’m not out here to embarrass anybody.”

Hill hooked on with the Fuel as a favor to a friend, Marlon Minifee, one of the team’s co-owners. It gave him something to do during the lockout, which next week will enter its fifth month.

To pass the time, Hill has been working out in S.A. and Indianapolis. He shared the South Texas portion of his workouts with a slew of former Spurs teammates, including All-Stars Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili.

Though it cast the 2011-12 season in dire jeopardy, Hill said he supported the union leadership’s decision to push the lockout into litigation last week. He didn’t care that the NBA’s most recent collective bargaining proposal was not put to a full vote of the membership before the union decided to take its fight to court.

“At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for your family,” Hill said, specifically praising union president Derek Fisher. “If that’s sacrificing what you make for a year to get the best deal possible — not just for us, but for the guys coming in after us — it’s worth it.”

The prospect of missing an entire season hasn’t caught Hill off guard.

“You knew this was coming,” said Hill, who has earned more than $3.2 million in his short career. “I paid attention during rookie orientation when they said, ‘Save your money.’?”

Still, Hill would rather be earning a paycheck in the NBA right now.

Instead of spending Sunday facing the Pistons in Detroit, Hill found himself running point guard in a half-empty gym that houses SAISD’s high school teams. He might be back soon. He wouldn’t rule out a return engagement with the Fuel.

“It depends on how much Icy Hot I have to use after this game,” he said.

Will we ever see an NBA All-Star Game again in San Antonio?

The news that prompted a question about whether the league’s mid-season classic ever would return to San Antonio.

The league traditionally likes to revolve this game around, particularly for franchises with new buildings.

But with the ATT Center open since 2002, we still haven’t seen an All-Star Game there.

Since that opening, we’ve seen the league allow the game to be played in Las Vegas, at the Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium in Arlington and once before in Houston. And it will be heading back to Houston again with a gap of only seven years — shortest span in league history for a single franchise between times hosting All-Star Games.

The ATT Center was suitable for the WNBA All-Star game last month, but apparently might not be good enough — or the league can’t block enough hotel rooms in the busy convention period of late February — to bring another NBA All-Star Game to town when San Antonio’s climate might be at its best of the year.  

And the immediate future doesn’t look bright. The league will have the renovated Madison Square Garden open next year, along the with the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the New Jersey Nets. The league hasn’t had an All-Star Game at the United Center in Chicago, Canseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, the Palace at Auburn Hills (Mich.) and the American Airlines Center in Dallas or the American Airlines Arena in Miami.

The only franchises to have failed to host an All-Star Game include Toronto, Memphis and Portland. Oklahoma City hosted two previous All-Star Games when the frachise was in Seattle.

But with 14 different teams (including the joint Laker/Clipper All-Star extravaganzas) hosting the All-Star Game since the Spurs, it might be doubtful if the game is ever coming back.

The NCAA appears to have outgrown the Alamodome for men’s Final Fours after overlooking the facility in its last bidding cycle. And it seems that the NBA has similarly progressed past the ATT Center as well for its spectacle events as well.