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Of course, more than 20 seasons of playing college and professionally combined meant a lot of coaches have impacted Allen’s basketball prowess. “When I’m saying things it's Coach (Jim) Calhoun, it’s Doc Rivers, it’s Erik Spoelstra, George Karl, Bob Weiss and Bob Hill. It’s Jeff Lynch. my high school coach. It’s every coach that ever touched hands on me,” Allen said.
When the news came down in the second week of December 1996 that Bob Hill, the loquacious, funny, impeccably dressed coach of the San Antonio Spurs, had been fired by the team’s general manager, who’d then installed himself as the team’s new coach, the reaction of much of the NBA community outside of Texas — of which I was a part — was, really, pretty uniform: “Who the (bleep) is Gregg Popovich?”
Gregg Popovich was the coach nobody wanted. It's hard to fathom now, after five NBA championships as coach of the San Antonio Spurs and with him now alone in fifth place on the league's all-time victory list. But it's true — Popovich's decision to fire Bob Hill and make himself coach and general manager in December 1996 was horribly received at first, leaving even some of his own players baffled. The San Antonio Express-News took a poll after that season and found that 92 percent of Spurs fans wanted Popovich fired. As Popovich would suggest now (on politics, one of his favorite topics), sometimes voters get it wrong.
Longtime NBA coach Bob Hill welcomed Yao Ming’s unanimous appointment this week as the Chinese Basketball Association’s new president. In fact, Hill, who has worked as a technical consultant for the Taiwan men’s national team in recent years, hailed the move. “Yao is an iconic figure here in China and rightfully so,” Hill told The Japan Times. “I believe he will be able to open doors for the CBA that have never even been approached throughout the history of the league.”
Yao plans to “sell his stake in the Shanghai Sharks before next season and pursue a reform agenda for the professional league, state media reported,” according to Reuters. What are Hill’s expectations for Yao in his new executive role? “He has the capabilities to upgrade the league like never before,” Hill said of Yao. “I’m confident there will be many, many people rooting for him as he is a quality person as well.”
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Wilkins asked Popovich whether he was joking, especially in light of the dinner he had just shared with Hill. In reality, while Hill and Wilkins dined, Popovich, Spurs chairman Peter Holt and team president Jack Diller were engaged in a two-hour phone call on whether to fire Hill. They decided to let him go, but the group would sleep on it. "We were all surprised," Wilkins recalled. "All of us thought he was joking. He sat down on the bus. Bob Hill never came out, and he told the bus to pull out. 'Oh, I guess he's serious.' That's when it all started."
Former NBA and Tokyo Apache head coach Bob Hill recognizes the value of former NBA players and coaches working in the B. League. “If you take a look at many of the better leagues around the world, NBA players and coaches were always a part of their inaugural years,” Hill told Hoop Scoop on Friday. “As the country’s players and coaches grow, then you see the country’s coaches take over the head coaching jobs and in some cases the number of imports are cut back. That’s how Europe has gotten so much better from top to bottom.”
The Suns kept the same coach at the top but the staff will have a different look with the team opting not to renew four members’ contracts for next season. Suns assistant coaches Corey Gaines and Bob Hill were informed Wednesday that their expiring contracts will not be renewed. Player development assistant Irving Roland and assistant video coordinator Ross Geiger also will not return to the Suns staff for Earl Watson’s first full season as head coach. All of the staff’s contracts will expire June 30 but the others will be renewed.
With Robinson out to start the 1997-98 season, the Spurs struggled to a 3-14 start. On the day that Robinson returned, then-general manager Gregg Popovich fired Hill and took over as head coach. San Antonio won three of the next five games before Robinson suffered a season-ending foot fracture, leading the Spurs to a 20-62 season that put them in draft position to add Tim Duncan. Five NBA championships later, Popovich remains coach. “We did really well but that’s part of life,” said Hill, who has kept home base in Boerne, Texas, which is an hour northwest of San Antonio. “I guess I didn’t do good enough. I don’t know. He wanted to be the coach. And as soon as he had an opportunity to get rid of me, he did it. It’s too bad. The league’s like that sometimes. You’re going to run into people like that sometimes and that’s part of life. It was a great experience. I’m happy I had that. It hasn’t affected my coaching. I continued to coach and always will.”
Hill, meanwhile, embraces the challenge of working alongside Watson. “Earl played for me in Seattle and we had a terrific relationship that was framed with a desire to win,” Hill told The Japan Times. “He was an excellent practice player and obviously played hard at all times in the games. “He will be an outstanding coach in this league and I am thrilled that he reached out to me to join him. “The Phoenix Suns have always been a cornerstone of the NBA and it will be challenging and fun to help them get back to that level of competition.”
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The Vertical: The Phoenix Suns hired four-time NBA head coach Bob Hill as an assistant coach, league sources tell The Vertical.
Seventeen years later, Popovich is a likely Hall of Fame coach with four NBA titles and one win from his fifth. Hill has lived in San Antonio for the past 11 years and has spent several years coaching in China, Taiwan, and Japan. “It’s part of life — [Popovich] always wanted to be the head coach, I just didn’t recognize it quick enough,” Hill said. “Listen, the last two games they have played against Miami have been just phenomenal. They have kicked Miami’s butt from one baseline to the other baseline, every facet of basketball, they’ve dominated. They’ve done it as a team and that’s a credit to the players. “When you play that well, you have to give them credit. They deserve it. What you’re witnessing with this team is real.”
When asked if he had any relationship with Popovich, Hill laughed and said, “No.” Hill said he doesn’t lament San Antonio’s success under Popovich. “If it was that hard [to deal with] I wouldn’t live here,” he said. “It’s not hard for me. I know what happened. It’s been interesting to watch the team grow. The great thing about the Spurs is they have a great team but they have really great people. It’s all come to fruition right now.” But when asked about those years, when the Spurs were in transition with an aging Robinson and before Duncan emerged as a possibility, Hill wishes things had turned out differently. “I didn’t have any idea [Popovich wanted to coach], I had an idea after the second year [in 1995-96] and two teams called and asked for permission to talk to me and they wouldn’t give them permission,” he said. “I had a pretty strong feeling at that point if he had a chance to fire me, he was going to. I probably should have just resigned and got out of here. I stayed and he got the job. I’m sure he had that in mind all along.”
Santa Cruz (Calif.) Warriors coach Casey Hill and staff are fully integrated and invested in the mission of the parent club, the Golden State Warriors. Hill, son of former NBA head coach Bob Hill, was promoted after two seasons as a Santa Cruz assistant. "The foundation of what we're doing (in Santa Cruz) has a lot to do with what Golden State is doing," said Hill, 30, who reports to Kirk Lacob, the Santa Cruz Warriors general manager and son of Golden State owner Joe Lacob. "I really paid attention during (Golden State) training camp. I got all their (offensive) actions, and we're using all their terminology, using their actions. I feel I'm obligated to do that, because: A) It's Golden State that's running it. It's their team, and this thing needs to be implemented where we're developing players. … And, B) It's my obligation to make it kind of a synergic kind of relationship where they send a player to us, he understands the system to us right away. Or if we send a player to them, he's got a really good base knowledge of what they have set."
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