Road to Duke
Grant Hill’s story begins in a world most basketball players never see. His father, Calvin Hill, was a Yale graduate, an NFL Rookie of the Year, and a Dallas Cowboys running back who played in Super Bowl V. His mother, Janet, graduated from Wellesley College — where she was a classmate of Hillary Rodham — and went on to become a corporate board member and consultant who sat on the boards of The Carlyle Group, Dean Foods, and Sprint. Grant was their only child. He was born at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on October 5, 1972. Calvin brought his Cowboys teammate Roger Staubach to the hospital. When Staubach asked what they were going to name the baby, Calvin and Janet said they hadn’t decided yet. ‘Why don’t you call him Grant?’ Staubach suggested. And so a Hall of Fame quarterback named a future Hall of Fame basketball player.
The Hills moved to Reston, Virginia — a planned community in Fairfax County — when Calvin joined the Washington Redskins. They chose Reston deliberately: a socioeconomic and ethnic Shangri-la, as Sports Illustrated described it, where the biggest mischief their son might get into was running the toll road to Dulles Airport. They filled the home with fine art. Gave him piano lessons. Took him to London at age six, where he did headstands in the office of the U.S. Ambassador to Britain. At twelve, he mistook Norman Mailer for the president of Harvard at a Yale brunch and had to be corrected by Yale president Bart Giamatti. The rules were strict: no phone calls until the weekend, one per day. All homework before sports. No parties until age sixteen. No football until ninth grade, lest some youth-league coach damage him.
Grant didn’t rebel. He internalized the discipline and developed an almost pathological humility. He seldom mentioned his father’s name and preferred to be picked up from school in the family’s third car, an old Volkswagen. When Calvin came to speak to his school, eighth-grader Grant feigned illness and hid in the nurse’s office rather than endure the attention.
Basketball chose him. He played youth soccer and basketball in Reston’s community leagues — later crediting suburban soccer with giving him his quick first step. By thirteen, his summer-league team upset a Detroit squad featuring future NBA players Chris Webber and Jalen Rose. At South Lakes High School, coach Wendell Byrd pulled the reluctant freshman straight to varsity. Grant didn’t want to skip ahead of his friends. Byrd insisted. By senior year, standing 6-foot-8 and running the point, he was Virginia’s Mr. Basketball, a McDonald’s All-American, a Parade All-American, and the most sought-after recruit in the nation.
His mother wanted Georgetown. His father preferred North Carolina. Grant chose Duke — recruited by Tommy Amaker, then an assistant under Krzyzewski. Janet later joked: ‘The kid was hamstrung by his mother. He was not allowed any independent thoughts or actions before he went to college. I was obsessive with discipline. Obviously he turned out okay.’
At Duke
Hill arrived at Duke in the fall of 1990 and immediately became part of something historic. Over four years, the Blue Devils went to three Final Fours, won two national championships, and played in three championship games. Hill was the first player in ACC history to accumulate more than 1,900 points, 700 rebounds, 400 assists, 200 steals, and 100 blocked shots. No one had ever done everything at that level. Duke retired his No. 33 jersey.
Freshman (1990–91): The First Title. Started 31 games. Earned Freshman All-American honors. In the Final Four, Duke stunned undefeated UNLV 79-77 — avenging the previous year’s 30-point championship game humiliation. Two nights later, in the title game against Kansas, Hill threw the alley-oop pass to Christian Laettner for a thunderous dunk that became one of the signature plays of the championship. Krzyzewski later said that Hill played as well as anyone in those four Final Four games, even though Laettner won the MOP.
Sophomore (1991–92): The Pass. With Bobby Hurley out injured for five games, Hill moved to point guard and averaged 16.4 points and 5.6 assists, including a victory over Shaquille O’Neal’s LSU squad. In the ACC Tournament championship, he came off the bench to shoot 8-for-8 from the field for 20 points. And then came March 28, 1992: the East Regional Final against Kentucky. Duke trailing 103-102, 2.1 seconds left in overtime. From under the Kentucky basket, Hill launched a 75-foot pass the length of the court to Laettner at the opposite free-throw line. Laettner caught it, turned, and hit The Shot. The pass — perfect, under impossible pressure — is the play that makes The Shot possible. Duke won its second consecutive title days later.
Junior (1992–93): Carrying the Load. With Laettner graduated, Hill became Duke’s best player. He won the NABC Defensive Player of the Year award — the same honor Tommy Amaker had won six years earlier as its inaugural recipient. Named Second-Team All-American. Duke reached the Sweet Sixteen before falling to Jason Kidd’s California Golden Bears. He could have left for the NBA. He stayed.
Senior (1993–94): The Final Run. ACC Player of the Year. Consensus First-Team All-American. In the NCAA Tournament, Hill was staggering: 69 points, 30 rebounds, 23 assists across four games. He held Purdue’s Glenn Robinson — the nation’s leading scorer — to just 13 points in the regional final. He dragged Duke to the championship game against Arkansas, where the Razorbacks’ pressure finally overwhelmed them. He graduated with a degree in history and political science. He was offered enormous money to leave early. He refused, because Calvin and Janet Hill’s son was going to finish what he started.
After Duke
The Detroit Pistons drafted Hill third overall. What followed was the most electrifying start to a career since Magic Johnson. Hill became the first rookie in any major American sport to lead All-Star fan balloting, receiving 1.29 million votes. He shared Rookie of the Year with Jason Kidd. In his first six seasons, he averaged 21.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 6.3 assists — numbers matched after their first six seasons only by Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Luka Doncic. Five All-Star selections. Five All-NBA teams. He led the Pistons in points, rebounds, and assists simultaneously. Fila signed him to an $80 million shoe deal — the richest in sneaker history at the time. He was, for a brief window, the most popular player in basketball.
In the summer of 2000, Hill signed a seven-year, $93 million contract with the Orlando Magic. Detroit received Chucky Atkins and a little-known center named Ben Wallace — who became a four-time Defensive Player of the Year and an NBA icon. Hill, meanwhile, was about to enter a nightmare.
His left ankle, first injured in the final weeks of the 1999-2000 season, refused to heal. The first surgery was performed in April 2000. When Hill arrived in Orlando, the team physician who was supposed to oversee his rehab, Dr. James Barnett, was killed in a plane crash in September. The lines of communication between surgeons fractured. Hill played just 4 games his first season in Orlando, 14 his second, 29 his third. Three surgeries. The ankle kept breaking down.
In March 2003, doctors performed a fourth surgery — an invasive procedure in which they deliberately re-fractured the ankle and realigned it with the leg bone. Five days later, at home recovering, Hill’s temperature spiked to 104.5 degrees. His teeth chattered. His body convulsed. His wife Tamia rushed him to the hospital. Doctors removed the splint and found the incision infected with MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a potentially fatal staph infection. Red and black welts ran up his leg. Orderlies held him down as he shook uncontrollably. Surgeons grafted skin and arteries from his triceps to close the wound on his ankle. Six months of the strongest available antibiotics followed.
‘I was so down, I just said, Forget it, I don’t want to play anymore,’ Hill later recalled. Duke’s chief of orthopedic surgery, James Nunley, told Hill he could be president someday — that he didn’t need basketball. But Hill, lying in that hospital bed, kept watching Kobe Bryant on television, winning his third straight championship. He wasn’t done.
After seven seasons in Orlando marked by five surgeries and 47 total games played in his first three years, Hill signed with the Phoenix Suns for $1.9 million per season — a fraction of his former salary. On the drive home from his physical with the Suns’ renowned medical staff, he nearly broke down crying at the wheel, overwhelmed by the care he finally felt he was receiving. In Phoenix, Hill was reborn. He played 82 games in 2008-09. He made the Western Conference Finals in 2010 at age 37. He finished his career with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2012-13, retiring at 40 after 19 NBA seasons: 1,026 games, 17,137 points, 6,167 rebounds, 4,225 assists. Seven All-Star selections. Hall of Fame.
Where Is He Now
Grant Hill has become one of the most accomplished post-career figures in basketball history. In 2015, he and Tony Ressler were part of an ownership group that purchased the Atlanta Hawks for $850 million — a franchise subsequently valued at over $1.5 billion. In 2023, he and Tamia became part-owners of Orlando City SC in MLS and the Orlando Pride in the NWSL. In 2024, he joined the ownership group that purchased the Baltimore Orioles.
He serves as Managing Director of USA Basketball, overseeing the national team program. He is a member of the NCAA Board of Governors. He works as a basketball analyst for CBS, NBC, and Turner Sports. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
He is one of the world’s premier collectors of African American art, with a personal collection anchored by works of Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett. He sponsored a three-year, seven-city touring exhibition of his collection. He co-produced documentary films, including one about the Duke back-to-back championship teams. He has been a vice-chairman for the Special Olympics and an advocate for MRSA awareness and prevention.
His philanthropy to Duke is extraordinary. He and Tamia were the first Duke alumni to endow a $1 million scholarship for men’s basketball. They subsequently led the Duke Basketball Legacy Fund, which has raised over $130 million — fully endowing all 13 basketball scholarships and building endowments for the head coach, assistant coaches, and program facilities.
He lives in Windermere, Florida, with Tamia and their two daughters, Myla Grace and Lael Rose. He has a lifetime endorsement deal with Fila. He still returns to South Lakes High School in Reston to give back to the program that shaped him. His estimated net worth exceeds $250 million.
In 2011, ESPN’s documentary ‘The Fab Five’ included Jalen Rose calling Hill and other Black Duke players ‘Uncle Toms’ — a characterization Hill addressed publicly with grace and nuance in a New York Times op-ed. He wrote that his parents, far from being privileged elites, had overcome enormous obstacles to build the life they gave him, and that attacking a Black man’s authenticity for attending a prestigious school said more about the attacker than the target.
The kid from Reston who didn’t want to skip ahead of his friends is now a Hall of Famer, a team owner three times over, one of the most respected voices in American sports, and a living argument that character and talent can survive anything — even five surgeries, a staph infection that nearly killed him, and a decade of what-ifs that would have broken anyone else.