Sonics'Hill remains baffled by Popovich's treatment

[Pistons < Spurs]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sonics/2002818672_soni21.html



SAN ANTONIO — Of all the places to settle down, Bob Hill chose Cordillera Ranch, an upscale, gated community about 20 miles northwest of San Antonio where luxury million dollar homes are buttressed by the breathtaking Texas Hill Country landscape.

It's an idyllic setting, which boasts a world-class golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, and a place where Hill and his wife, Pam, raised three boys — Cameron, Chris and Casey — who played basketball and learned their dad's craft at Trinity University.

Hill refers to his home here as "a little slice of heaven," which is a little strange because it's also a place where he's constantly reminded of his biggest failure in basketball and how great his coaching career might have been if not for Gregg Popovich.

"It was what it was," Hill said Monday as his Sonics prepared for tonight's game at San Antonio, which is not only a rematch of last year's Western Conference semifinalists but his first visit as a head coach since being fired by then-president Popovich 10 years ago.

"It's over. I don't think I'm going to feel anything. There's no players on the team that I coached. David [Robinson] will be in the stands, but that's it."

Hill has harbored a deep resentment toward Popovich, whom he believes unfairly terminated his employment and maligned his reputation in the NBA.

Hill has no proof to support his claims, just unsubstantiated claims from anonymous friends throughout the league and a gut feeling that he has been wronged.

"I just know him too well," Hill said. "I know what he's like behind closed doors. I've been in lots and lots of meetings with him. The only way he can justify what he did was to create all this deception that I was some kind of ... monster. That I was hard to work with or whatever ... and they were all lies."

It still baffles Hill that he was fired after guiding San Antonio to a league-best 62-20 record during the 1994-95 season and 59 wins the next season. He doesn't mention that he inherited a team that won 55 games or that the Spurs failed to advance past the Western Conference finals under his guidance.

It still burns at Hill that he was fired after starting the 1996-97 season with a 3-15 record even though several players were out because of injuries, including Robinson, who played six games that season after aggravating a back injury.

"He basically set me up and kept lying to me, and the first chance he got, he got rid of me," Hill said. "The first chance. We won [121] games in two years. What people remember, which is really sad, is that only David was out.

"There were five guys out. David was out. Sean [Elliott] was out. Chuck Person was out. Will Perdue missed eight games [early]."

With Popovich at the helm, the Spurs finished 20-62 and landed the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, which they used to select Tim Duncan, who became a two-time MVP. Since he joined the Spurs, they have the best winning percentage of any team in the four major sports at .708 (478-197) and three NBA titles.

If the story ended here, maybe Hill wouldn't still hold a grudge. Despite his glowing résumé, he was passed over for several jobs.

Admittedly, Hill was selective. He refused to start at the bottom again and declined offers to work as an assistant. He finished second in the interviewing process in Cleveland and Seattle and unwisely took the job at Fordham University, where he was dismissed after four seasons.

Friends told Hill that owners might have blackballed him because he accepted $10,000 to coach in a charity game organized by the NBA union before the lockout-shortened 1999 season.

"I don't know, that's possible," he said. "That may have been it. Or maybe it was something else."

[angel_luv]

Even if Bob was treated unjustly ( I wasn't in the meetings to know), it is useless to obsess over something that you can't ever change.
He is in danger of wasting the time he's been given now, which is a shame.

[1Parker1]

I feel a Spurs ass-kicking win tonight....

[Peter]

Man, what a bitch.


It still baffles Hill that he was fired after guiding San Antonio to a league-best 62-20 record during the 1994-95 season and 59 wins the next season. He doesn't mention that he inherited a team that won 55 games or that the Spurs failed to advance past the Western Conference finals under his guidance.

Exactly. The team needed a change to get to the next level, to avoid being stuck in the Sacto/Dallas hell of being good enough to win a shitload of regular season games, only to sputter in the postseason.


If the story ended here, maybe Hill wouldn't still hold a grudge. Despite his glowing résumé, he was passed over for several jobs.

Admittedly, Hill was selective. He refused to start at the bottom again and declined offers to work as an assistant. He finished second in the interviewing process in Cleveland and Seattle and unwisely took the job at Fordham University, where he was dismissed after four seasons.

Sounds like he has his own ass to blame as much as anyone else. Time for him to forget about what happened a decade ago. I'm tired of seeing it come up on the radar screen.

[50 cent]

What a shameless crybaby. Let it go. It's over.

[Spurologist]

Pop should recognize his feelings and let him borrow his kid's DVD:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JNQG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Pacifier included.

[ObiwanGinobili]

what a whiny cry baby bitch.

10 years later .
IF you say your over it then BE over it and STFU.

[Kori Ellis]

Some bad blood will flow today

FRANK HUGHES; The News Tribune
Published: February 21st, 2006 02:30 AM

http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/story/5540609p-4988778c.html

SAN ANTONIO – It was Dec. 10, 1996, and Bob Hill, younger and more arrogant than today’s version, was having a staff meeting at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Phoenix.
His team at the time, the San Antonio Spurs, was struggling, losing 15 of its first 18 games. That was mitigated, of course, by the fact that David Robinson, one of the best players in the game, had been injured for most of the season, and several of his starting teammates also were sidelined with a variety of maladies.

At least that was Hill’s perception.

But then Spurs general manager Gregg Popovich walked in, asked Hill to accompany him to his room and proceeded to change the course of both of their lives.

Popovich fired Hill. He also installed himself as the Spurs’ coach.

Hill had won 121 games over the previous two seasons. He had taken the Spurs to the conference finals in one of those seasons. He had, as he said, laid a foundation for winning.

But it didn’t matter. Not to Popovich. He fired Hill, much to the great astonishment and unabated chagrin of Hill.

“I looked at him,” Hill recalls, “and I said, ‘How can you bring a family to San Antonio, make all the promises to us that you made, and do this, and look yourself in the mirror?’

“That’s what I said. And I very calmly stood up, shut the door, and walked away.”

Hill has not spoken to Popovich since, though he will get that opportunity tonight when the Sonics play in San Antonio and Hill will return to his former place of employment for the first time in nearly a decade.

After he was fired, Hill took a job as a television commentator, and he ended up working one of the Spurs’ games. San Antonio won, so Popovich was brought over for a postgame interview. Hill did not ask Popovich one question, instead allowing his play-by-play partner to conduct the entire interview.

That is the level of anger and resentment that Hill harbors toward a man who, as it could be viewed, stole away his Hall of Fame coaching career.

After that miserable season, the Spurs won the draft lottery and got the rights to Tim Duncan. With Robinson and Duncan, they won a championship in 1999, the strike-shortened season. They added Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili and Bruce Bowen, and they won two more. The Spurs are poised to win another this season, and Popovich will certainly go down in history as one of the best coaches in the game, a moniker that Hill admits he has thought could have gone to him.

But it didn’t, he added, “so what am I going to say?”

There were other things surrounding Hill’s firing. The team had played uninspired basketball in the playoffs the previous season, getting routed by Utah. Popovich felt that Hill marginalized his assistant coaches. Some players did not take to Hill, feeling his pretentiousness a detriment to a team led by David Robinson, one of the league’s best people.

But those were simply items on the periphery. In the end, Popovich wanted to coach, and – in Hill’s view – he pulled off one of the greatest undermines of all time to realize his dream. The sum total of Popovich’s head coaching experience before that day was seven seasons at tiny Pomona-Pitzer (Calif.) college.

It was a big deal in San Antonio, and Popovich was badly maligned by a sporting public that was privy to the inner workings of the town’s only major sports franchise.

Three championships, loads of success and the passing of time have made the issue a distant memory, but not for Hill, who, while trying to downplay the issue in recent weeks, really has never let it stray far from his mind.

“I don’t know if bitter is the word,” Hill explains. “I was absolutely shocked that, as an organization, they would do that after all the success we had. That’s how I felt: shocked.”

An interesting subplot of tonight’s game is going to be how Hill is received in the town where he has lived – he owns a ranch about 40 minutes from town – and raised his family since he was fired.

Will he be cheered? Will he be booed? Will the crowd care after so much time has passed?

“I don’t know,” Hill said. “The ones that believe Buck Harvey’s articles will boo and the people that know me will cheer.”

Buck Harvey is an affable columnist for the San Antonio Express News who covered Hill when he was coach. They got along at the time, both men say, but Harvey since has been very critical of Hill, writing things Hill calls “out and out lies.” Hill believes Harvey is Popovich’s public relations tool used to help the public forget about the specifics of the regime change.

Harvey, at the All-Star game in Houston, explained to The News Tribune his reversal of opinion about Hill.

“When he got fired, I thought Popovich was going to be in trouble and I thought Bob would have absolutely no problem getting another job,” Harvey said. “Since then, it has been nine years, and every organization but two have replaced their coach, probably by an average of four times.

“And what became clear as time went along was that he was not well received by his peers. My only question is, why has he not gotten another job for nine years? I know he wanted one. I can only sense that it was some personality issue that he had with his peers. And I started writing this.”

It has hurt his family more than it bothers him, Hill says. One of his sons is an assistant coach at Trinity University, a local NCAA Division III school, and another of his sons plays for Trinity. But, clearly, it is something that irritates Hill.

It adds to the intrigue for tonight’s meeting. Now that both men have jobs at the highest level of their profession, could this game be therapeutic?

Perhaps it will allow Hill to move on, and put behind him the memory of that fateful day in Arizona that has haunted him for nine years. Perhaps he’ll walk on to the court and see the man who once fired him and make that 40-foot stroll down the sideline.

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk,” Hill said.

[picnroll]

This whiny little baby ought to take a lesson from Scott and Carlisle.

[ChumpDumper]

Eh, dude got paid $4 million to make Fordham a 2-26 team. I guess that really hurt his family too. His ego kept him out of the NBA -- he woldn't accept assistant jobs until his rep was totally ruined by the Fordham debacle.

[angel_luv]

I just don't understand why anyone would let something tarnish/ ruin their entire life.

[yeahone]

ohhh cry baby

[CubanMustGo]

The whole world is out to get Bob Hill. Just ask him. Or don't, he'll whine about something that happened ten years ago, anyway.

Remember, none of it is his fault. He was perfect. Well, other than getting outcoached in the playoffs on those occasions when his teams qualified. GPop done him wrong and since Pop's not publicly trashing Hill at every chance (unlike what Hill has been doing) then he must be CIA Pop, maneuvering behind the scenes to keep Hill out of the L these last ten years. He probably got to the players at Fordham, too. And he's been on the phone to Seattle making them play like scrubs since Hill took over.

Bob "making a mountain out of a mole" Hill.

[CubanMustGo]

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk,” Hill said.

About what? How Hill has taken every possible opportunity to badmouth Popovich?

[FromWayDowntown]

The Spurs are poised to win another this season, and Popovich will certainly go down in history as one of the best coaches in the game, a moniker that Hill admits he has thought could have gone to him.

Apparently, Hill's narcissism is unending.

[tlongII]

Hill is right. Popovich is a dirty rotten bastard!

[FromWayDowntown]

Hill is right. Popovich is a dirty rotten bastard!

Just think, had Bob Hill been the Spurs coach in 1999, they probably would have lost to the Lakers in the 2nd round.

And if they made the WCF, Hill would have probably pulled Sean Elliott late in the 4th of Game 2, on Memorial Day, 1999.

[smeagol]

Hill is right. Popovich is a dirty rotten bastard!
Damn, now I have to read all of your stupid posts to watch your naked girl sig. :lol

[pache100]

Hill is right. Popovich is a dirty rotten bastard!

http://i1.tinypic.com/o93h8x.gif

[nkdlunch]

Just like Marley, Lennon, Che, Bob Hill got on the CIA's bad side

[Mixability]

Damn, now I have to read all of your stupid posts to watch your naked girl sig. :lol

you too? :lol

[Peter]

I'd imagine it would've been hard for Hill to get a new NBA job back then with Kevin O'Keefe's chin permanently on his nuts. The NBA is a family show, after all.

[FromWayDowntown]

I'd imagine it would've been hard for Hill to get a new NBA job back then with Kevin O'Keefe's chin permanently on his nuts. The NBA is a family show, after all.

I often wondered how O'Keeffe kept his chin on Hill's nuts and his lips on Vinny Del Negro's ass all at the same time.

[exstatic]

Bob Hill is a legend in his own mind. I can't wait until Seattle fires him so he can be bitter at THEM for 10 years and get off Pop's nutsack.

[BigZak]

may the best team win...we will all see what kind of coach Pop really is when the TD era is over...or will he retire with Timmy?

Go Spurs Go Forever!

[Dingle Barry]

may the best team win...we will all see what kind of coach Pop really is when the TD era is over...or will he retire with Timmy?

Go Spurs Go Forever!

What kind of horseshit is this? Every great coach needs a legendary player. Hill had Admiral, remember?

[Peter]

Bob Hill had a pre-back injury DRob on his team. He had enough talent when he was in SA to enjoy a 62 win season in 1994-95 and a 59 win season in 1995-96. The problem was that his coaching absolutely sucked when it came down to winning time. Defense was an afterthought to offense and fashion for Hill.

[Tek_XX]

I think we can totally see why so many people in the NBA can't stand this guy. I'm surprised he's a head coach right now.

What kind of idiot head coach thinks there's job security in the NBA, when things go south you're out the door.

[Guru of Nothing]

Bob Hill = stock Hollywood bad movie buffoon; i.e., the "boss" in Office Space.

Actually, Office Space was a decent movie, but the points remains.

TPS Reports >>>> Defense.

[Mr. Body]

What a perfumed prince. He drove tiny Fordham to give him tons of money - more than they could afford - and then drove the program into the dirt, badmouthing them as he left. If Pop hadn't canned him, Duncan would well be in Orlando these last five years.

[Spurs rock]

Wow 10 years already? Time goes by fast!

[CubanMustGo]

Dear Bob:

Scoreboard.

Sincerely yrs, Pop

[SequSpur]

The Chicago Bull and Houston Rocket Era > San Antonio.

Coyote > Robinson.

The Spurs weren't going to win shit until Duncan got here.

Without Duncan, Pop is fucking gone like 7 years ago.

Red McCombs never wanted to promote Pop, didn't think he had the experience, where is the write up on that?

He clearly stated in public that Pop should not hold 2 positions within the organization because he was the players friend and he can't make tough decisions........

Which he still can't fuckin make...

[Peter]

The Chicago Bull and Houston Rocket Era > San Antonio.

Coyote > Robinson.

The Spurs weren't going to win shit until Duncan got here.

Without Duncan, Pop is fucking gone like 7 years ago.

Red McCombs never wanted to promote Pop, didn't think he had the experience, where is the write up on that?

When? 1996?



He clearly stated in public that Pop should not hold 2 positions within the organization because he was the players friend and he can't make tough decisions........

Which he still can't fuckin make...

How many pro sports teams has McCombs owned which won a championship?

[Peter]

I'd like to remind the court jester that McCombs nixed a Wille A and TC for Barkley deal in 1992.

[ChumpDumper]

How experienced was John Lucas?

[Peter]

How experienced was John Lucas?


But Luc was pals with Red.

I will say this: Red makes Holt look like a spendthrift.

[T Park]

He clearly stated in public that Pop should not hold 2 positions within the organization because he was the players friend and he can't make tough decisions........

Which he still can't fuckin make...

Like not trading Malik Rose, and not letting Hedo Turkoglu walk in free agency?