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From Almost Any Reasonable Perspective, Hill Stands Alone at the Top

You can have Glenn Robinson, the Big Dog. You can have Jason Kidd. You can take anybody you want from college basketball, as long as I can take Grant Hill, the very best player in the country. Every game he plays in this NCAA tournament, you see something else, something special, the kind of talent, resourcefulness, intelligence and presence that should make him the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. Oh, the safe thing to do is to take the Big Dog, because that way the season-ticket holders and the radio call-ins and the media types won't run you right out of town. Robinson, as we know, can score 50. Kidd makes us think of Magic. But they're at home watching. The supporting players on Purdue and Cal are about the same as the supporting cast at Duke. But Grant Hill makes Duke go. All he does is beat you a hundred different ways.

He beat Robinson himself, with defense. One-on-one, Devil on Dog. He beat Florida Saturday night by stopping one of the best three-point shooters in the country at one end, then scoring or orchestrating every basket at the other. He's the best defensive player in the country, and the most versatile offensive player. Duke never won a national title before Hill arrived from Reston's South Lakes High, and even now with good but not great running mates, Hill has the Blue Devils back within 40 minutes of a third NCAA title in four years. Three titles in an era of parity? That's the kind of stuff you associate with Alcindor and Walton.

This is how good Grant Hill is. Shame on us for taking so long to notice. You ask college basketball coaches to compare their own players over time and they balk; they say they don't want to rank them or get into making comparisons. Mike Krzyzewski didn't even play that when asked late Saturday about Hill. "Grant Hill," Mike Krzyzewski said, "is the best player I've ever coached, period."

At this moment, there is no deficiency in Hill's game. None. He handles the ball better than Robinson, shoots it nearly as well, rebounds way above average for a playmaker, passes it better than Robinson and plays better defense. In the NBA, Hill can play the point, the two-guard, and small forward, at 6 feet 8. In the Western Conference, he'd be a complete terror. Robinson will be a great pro forward, but only a forward. Kidd passes better than Hill, but that's it. There's no doubt a great passer can change the game with that skill alone, which is Kidd's value. But his defense, shooting, and tenacity don't come close, at this point, to Grant Hill's. About three games ago Hill passed Donyell Marshall on all scorecards. It's just now, with one game left in the college season, that some NBA personnel people may have to rethink their draft selections.

The shots and passes he made, the defensive stops and the rebounds he grabbed against Florida here Saturday were almost absurd. "He hit big-time threes when they had to have them," said Florida's own Coach K, Lon Kruger. "He's so quick, he could fall behind a step, but he makes it up so fast. He did an incredible job on Craig Brown, who's great without the ball."

At some point, you want to see what a player does when he's dead tired, when his teammates are playing horribly, when he's down a dozen points in a championship situation. It's a test Hill passed calmly against Florida. Calvin Hill, his father and a man who knows a little something about performances in championship situations, sat amazed at his own son afterward. "The thing is, he really gave up a lot of his game this year," Calvin Hill said. "Early on, I told him, 'Grant, you've got to shoot more. This is an inexperienced team, you've got to average 21, 22 points a game.' He told me, 'Dad, we've got young guys who need to be integrated. I can score 22 points, but we might not win.' I was a skeptic, but he was right. Playing the point has helped him understand other players. When he had to sub for Bobby Hurley {then injured} two years ago, he saw how difficult it is to play the position, how you had to be concerned about so many things, egos being dealt with."

And it's obviously helped Hill flourish. When the Duke coaching staff is making up a game plan with this year's team, the primary question is, "Who's guarding Grant?" If it's a guard, Hill's going to post up. If it's a bigger player, likely slower, Hill's going outside. Grant Hill is a walking mismatch, always in his team's favor. Robinson and Kidd can take over a game offensively, but neither can guard the opponent's best player (at three positions, no less). When Duke went to a 1-4 offensive spread late against Florida, it was Hill one possession hitting a three-pointer, and a kick-out pass to Jeff Capel shortly thereafter for an assist on a three-pointer. "Whether it's ballhandling, defense, shooting, or presence," Krzyzewski said, "he does everything at the highest level."

The more he matures, the more Hill reminds NBA scouts of Scottie Pippen. Against Florida, Hill scored a game-high 25 points, hit 8-of-13 shots (the only Blue Devil over 50 percent), grabbed 6 rebounds and handed out 5 assists. Oh, he played all 40 minutes.

Let's imagine for a moment the Bullets were lucky enough in the lottery to be in position to draft Hill. The Bullets certainly don't need any more shooting guards or small forwards. The Bullets need a playmaker. Hill's a playmaker, probably the second-best in the draft behind Kidd. Hill and Calbert Cheaney in the backcourt? Late Saturday, I asked an NBA scout if it was crazy to suggest that Hill should be the No. 1 pick ahead of Big Dog, ahead of Kidd. "That's what quite a few of us are talking about now," the scout said. "It still probably depends on the team."

For another night, only one team is dependent on Hill: Duke. The Blue Devils aren't as good as Arkansas. In a seven-game series, the Dukies could probably win once. The Razorbacks are too big, too quick, too deep, and Nolan Richardson is too good of a coach for his team to have lapses. If Krzyzewski can figure out which Arkansas player Chris Collins can guard, he's a magician, not a coach. But this is single-elimination. You only need to hit the note once, not sustain it. The longer this tournament goes, the more Grant Hill is reminding people of 1988. That year a kid named Danny Manning took over the NCAA tournament. He became the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, versatile and complete as a player. Arkansas has everything, except Grant Hill. We wait once again to see how much one virtuoso can do.