Character, some say, is what you do when no one is watching. But in the NBA that isn’t quite right, is it? We put the athletes on our favorite teams on pedestals and expect them to be perfect, both on the court and off. Perhaps more egregiously, we sometimes condone the sins of our “role models” because of their performance on the field of play. We stretch the bounds of what character means because we don’t want to have to believe our heroes are less than perfect. That the people we cheer for are somehow tainted.
Of course occasionally those players live up to these impossibly high standards. One of them, I would submit, is Phoenix Suns forward Grant Hill.
Grant Hill is known throughout the NBA as a class act, through and through. He is the only three time winner of the NBA Sportsmanship Award and during his prime Hill was also a player of transcendent talent, perhaps an all-time great. Unfortunately Hill was robbed of the opportunity to maximize his potential by the whim of fate and the fluke of injury. Yet what defines Grant Hill to me isn’t his failures to live up to the hype, it’s the way that he dealt with adversity in his career. When things stopped going his way, when the chips were down, when the fairy tale career started feeling like a nightmare, how did he respond?
Next Page: Going Down Hill
Flash back to the year 2000. Grant Hill has just inked a mammoth deal with Orlando and is going to team with Tracy McGrady to make the Magic title contenders for years to come. Jordan and Pippen for a new generation. But it never worked out the way everyone thought it would.
Instead Hill went on to miss 357 of his next 492 possible regular season games. Before signing with the Magic he had fractured his ankle during the playoffs playing for the Detroit Pistons. Undeterred, the Magic gave him $93 Million dollars to come play for them but Hill’s ankle was never right. He played only 4 games his first season and suffered through setback after setback until finally in 2003 he underwent a procedure in which doctors re-fractured his ankle and realigned it with his leg bone. Then things went from bad to worse.
Only days after the surgery, Hill was rushed back to the hospital with a life threatening staph infection. He had to take intravenous antibiotics for the next six months and missed the entire 2003 – 2004 season.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye Grant Hill’s career trajectory had gone from all-time great to all-time disappointment. Some fans in Orlando probably hold a grudge to this day for what they consider to be money they shelled out that Hill never earned. I’m sure knowing they feel that way had to eat up Hill inside. Maybe it still does. For most players, between the injuries and the criticisms, it would be enough to throw in the towel. To call it a career and head for the refuge of the broadcast booth. But that wasn’t part of Grant Hill’s character.
Instead Hill did the only thing he knew how to do. He worked his tail off and got back on the court.
After playing 65 games in his last season in Orlando Hill signed with the Phoenix Suns. To the surprise of probably everyone except Hill himself, he has missed only 15 of the 314 possible regular season games as a members of the Suns coming in to Tuesday’s matchup with the Lakers. And it isn’t like he’s been playing spot minutes either. Although he’s not the athlete he once was, Hill was a key member of the Suns squad that came within 2 games of the NBA finals last season, the deepest playoff run of Hill’s career. Maybe he never regained the MVP caliber form that he showed while a Piston, but Grant Hill certainly has demonstrated a level of perseverance few can equal.
Next Page: Lessons to Learn
To me this is where Andrew Bynum should take heed. Every loudmouth with a microphone has had an opinion on the injury plagued beginning to Drew’s career. What he was, what he is and what he will be. Some argue Bynum has already shown us the peak of his abilities. Trade him now while he still has value, they say. Others bemoan that his history of injuries virtually guarantees that the potential we all see in him will never be realized. That in five years time we will all remember him as just another Sam Bowie.
But the truth is none of our expectations, our desires, our hopes or fears, none of them really matter when it comes down to defining who Andrew Bynum is. Sure, as NBA players go, he’s had his share of misfortunes so. But who hasn’t?
Just like Hill in the end Bynum, at least in my mind, will have a career defined by how he dealt with adversity. It may just be that Bynum’s most recent knee injury won’t be his last. It may be he never puts it together the way all Lakers fans are hoping for. Or perhaps he leaves the injuries behind him and joins the pantheon of great Lakers centers. But the outcome isn’t nearly as important as we want it to be.
The measuring stick for Bynum shouldn’t be points or rebounds or blocked shots. It should be in his perseverance, his hard work and his dedication. Things that are hard to quantity, that perhaps only Bynum will know for certain in his own mind. But you know what, that’s enough. In the end, it has to be.
Because All-Star games come and go. Accolades and headlines in the press are as ethereal as the paper they’re written on. Even NBA Championships fade into memory after enough time has passed. But character, whether witnessed or not, is something that lasts forever. Grant Hill knows it. Frankly, it’s a lesson we could all learn.