The Complicated Legacy of Grant Hill

Over six seasons with the Pistons, Hill was considered the heir apparent to Michael Jordan. But two decades removed from his departure, Piston fans remember Hill as a victim of circumstance — the bridge between the two most successful eras in franchise history

My earliest basketball memories belong to Grant Hill, though this is largely by default: between my 2nd and 8th birthdays — a crucial point in any budding sports addict’s young life — Hill played his first six seasons in the NBA (from 1994 to 2000) with my Detroit Pistons.

Granted, my recollection of Hill’s tenure in Detroit consists of a single image more than anything else: his №33 splashed below the flaming horse motif on the Pistons’ then-loathed, now-loved jerseys during the Teal era, which, like many other millennials raised in metro Detroit during this period, was the first basketball uni I owned — though it’s worth noting that I, regrettably, convinced my dad to buy me the team’s burgundy alternate jersey, a decision that, even for an inherently stupid child, is nothing short of indefensible.

Only in the two decades since his apex have I fully grasped what the Grant Hill era meant — both to the…