Finally healthy, Hill appreciates game now more than ever

Great story on 37 year old Grant Hill and his tremendous focus and work ethic. From cnnsi.com:

Another season is in progress. It should be his 16th. Grant Hill is sitting in another visiting locker room on another weeknight preparing himself for another game.

"We all have our routine," he said, as he detailed his checklist. "I come over to the arena early, get a little work done on the table with the trainer, Aaron Nelson. Go out and do my shooting routine. Come back in here and get some exercises. Get some heat packs on between 90 and 70 minutes before the game.

"At 60 [minutes], I put my shirt on. I eat my [energy] bar and I watch the game film and take in what they do and just get ready for the game."

He is a 37-year-old small forward for the Phoenix Suns, an old man excelling against younger, more explosive athletes. The wonder is that he does not appear fatigued. The details of the regimen do not bore him. On the contrary: He loves to arrange the entire day around the game that night.

"I usually come to the arena on the first bus," he said. "But if we're at home, a 7 p.m. game, I usually leave the house around 4:15 to try to get there about 4:45.

"It's the whole routine. The routine starts the moment you wake up. Come home from [the morning] shootaround. Eat. Sleep again. When I wake up from my nap, the first thing I do, I turn the heat up to 75 degrees. I turn on all the lights in the room. I don't know why I do it. I turn on all the lights and I open the curtains. I've been doing that as long as I can remember."

He is amazed to still be sitting here, to have another game waiting at the end of another day. Ten years ago, Hill suffered a broken left ankle that would require five operations to fix, including one in 2003 that almost killed him after an infection raised his temperature above 104 degrees. He missed 357 games over the next six years with Orlando, including the entire 2003-04 season. He was supposed to contend for championships with Tracy McGrady and qualify for entry into the Hall of Fame, but all of that receded behind the medical trauma and the pain.

Now, Hill is contributing 30.1 minutes per game and 11.5 points to a Phoenix rotation balanced with a half-dozen scorers in double figures. The Suns cannot win the championship -- small up front, porous defensively -- yet they are a game away from overtaking Utah for home-court advantage in the first round. He has fit in by expanding his range to the three-point line, which isn't easy for a star approaching the end of his career. Over six truncated seasons with Orlando, Hill attempted 40 threes and made nine of them. In three years with Phoenix, he has hit 83-for-236 (35.2 percent) from the three-point line.

"I haven't necessarily shot a lot of them during this season," he said, though he is converting a career-best 46.4 percent of the 56 threes he has attempted. "But I've put my work in, and I just want to get better. Iron out my weaknesses, and certainly that may have been -- or may be -- one of them. But you've just got to work at it.

"And that's the thing I enjoyed this summer: 'OK, let's work on something, let's improve on it, whether I got better or not.' It's just the fact that I'm thinking along those lines and able to put the time in to do it. A lot of guys who came in [to the NBA as rookies in 1994] with me who would love to be working on something for next season. A lot of these guys are done, so I'm very appreciative. Very appreciative."

Here may be the most impressive achievement of Hill's career: Over the last two seasons, he has missed one game. He played all 82 last season for the first time.

He still can't believe he's here, in this locker room, preparing for this night to come.

"I may have told you this before, but I used to laugh at Joe Dumars," Hill said of his early years with Detroit, when Dumars was continuing to play into his 30s. "I would tell him, 'Man, when I'm 34, I'm done.' I was a young kid and 34 seemed so far down the road when you're 21 or 22 years old. And maybe if I'd been healthy all these years and played all these minutes, maybe now mentally and physically it would just be over for me. But I missed a lot. I still love it, enjoy it, appreciate it even more."

When basketball should have been easiest for him, the game played hard to get. He chased it and fell in love all over again.

Suns need a sense of urgency

I posted below how the Warriors are playing some good basketball right now. The opponent that they beat last night, the Phoenix Suns, are in a freefall right now, losing 8 of their last 12. The Suns are loaded with talented names, like Shaq, Steve Nash, Amare Stoudamire, Grant Hill, Jason Richardson, etc. However, they are still trying to find an identity and consistency on defense:

"I don't feel like we're competing as hard as we need to," Suns guard Steve Nash said. "I don't feel like we're hustling all the time. If you're not playing a hot team and not playing at their level, you can hustle and outwork them and we didn't do that. Same old. We missed (defensive) coverages. We didn't hustle as much as we need to. It's a lack of competition. It sucks."

"Gotta guard somebody," Shaquille O'Neal said. "I've been saying the same thing the whole year. It doesn't matter if we run or slow it down. We've got to guard somebody. We have principles on defense. You get broken down and you help. You better help the helper. You can't really get broken down all the time. We've got to guard a little bit better. Until then, who knows?"

Said Grant Hill:

"The effort wasn't there tonight. Quite honestly, you can't coach effort. They came out hard and we didn't. We've got to get this thing right. We've been saying that forever. I've thought about it a lot. I can't put my finger on it. We're not playing with passion. I'll accept responsibility. I wasn't good tonight. We just don't play hard all the time. When we do, we usually give ourselves a chance to win. When we don't, we don't have any energy or enthusiasm."

Grant Hill on Shot Selection

Earlier this season, Suns forward Grant Hill was dealing with being a reserve for the first time in his career. His time on the floor was crunched, and he tried to jam the same amount of production into it.
He hurried his game and got away from his ability to play off his co-stars, especially when he was on the floor with other reserves.

"My role on this team is, 'Take what's given,' " Hill said.

Hill does that as well as anyone in the NBA at his position. Hill and Cleveland's LeBron James were the only swingmen who entered Friday's games ranked in the top 30 in field-goal percentage. Hill and James were tied for 23rd overall at 50.8 percent entering Friday, with only power forwards and centers ahead of them, except for Boston point guard Rajon Rondo (51.5).

Hill is a career 48.4 percent shooter and is shooting over 50 percent for a third consecutive season. He has become more selective after several injury-plagued seasons.

"It really forced me to become more efficient and changed my role right then and there," Hill said. "That's helped. Now I get a lot of good looks, either layups in transition or open looks. I just try to take high-percentage shots. Sometimes I feel like I pass up shots. Maybe I should take more."

"Some days you might get six, seven shots, and some days you might get 14, 15," Hill said. "We have so many weapons on this team. If you're an opposing player, who do you focus on? I may go seven minutes without shooting, but I can still be out there being productive - rebounds, defense, assists - and when the time comes, I'll get my opportunities."

"Shaq (O'Neal), Amaré (Stoudemire) and Steve (Nash) and the attention they bring allows him to get wide-open shots and easy shots," coach Terry Porter said. "He also has very good shot selection. Grant isn't a guy who's just going to jack a shot for the sake of jacking one. Most of his shots are high-percentage shots."