Pete Nichols : Basketball
There are, it appears, two roads you can travel in basketball. You can go the way of Dennis Rodman (well, maybe not all the way) or you could follow the path Grant Hill treads.
Common sense dictates the latter for, recently, the clean-cut forward with the Detroit Pistons signed the second most valuable endorsement in sporting history. Americans like coming out with such lofty statistics but in this case they are probably right: under the terms of his new contract with the Italian shoe company Fila, the 24-year-old will receive $80- million over seven years.
Hill already had a half-decent deal with Fila – the company signed him as a 21-year- old draftee for $6-million a year. That contract had another two years to run but Fila have replaced it with one worth almost twice as much on the grounds that Hill had taken the brand from a market-share of seventh to third.
Only Michael Jordan has earned more from a single endorsement: his Nike contract is worth $20-million for one year. When the 34-year-old Bulls mega-star finally abdicates, the NBA expects Hill to assume the throne.
His route to the top has not been as well mapped as, say, Tiger Woods’s, who se Nike contract is worth $40-million over five years. Then again, Hill has hardly had to kick against the pricks. His mother Janet was a college friend of Hilary Clinton’s, his father Calvin was a running back with the Dallas Cowboys.
When he went to school he went to the best: Duke University at Durham, North Carolina, where he majored in history and came under the wing of the coach Mike Krzyzewski . Hill’s status at Duke was such that, when he left they retired his number (33) with him. That is as close to canonisation as you can get. At Detroit it has been more of the same: the joint Rookie of the Year in his first season, he led the team in points, rebounds and assists in his second and won the IBM Player of the Year award – for the NBA player making the greatest overall contribution to his team – in his third.
Somewhere between seasons Hill also won an Olympic gold medal but in the NBA that almost comes with the job. All this with a reputation so spotless it borders on the antiseptic.
In the past 12 months Hill has “acted as a spokesman” for McDonald’s, Kelloggs, Sprite, SkyBox, Wilson Basketballs, Ohio Art, GMC Trucks and Fila. When the Grant Hill website set up a win-a-truck competition, the site had 42 000 hits in a day. It all makes him a very rich young man, but not necessarily an exciting one.
“The good guys are important,” says John Holmes, who manages Gary Lineker, the England footballer who never suffered the indignity of a yellow card. “You need the role models. At the end of the day a lot of kids watch sport and you have to have stars who behave well.”
Holmes also reckons that the good guys last longer. “With the bad guys it’s like being the fastest gun in town. There’s always someone to shoot you down.”
Which brings us back to Rodman. Bad As I Wanna Be is the autobiography, so there are no prizes for guessing into which camp he falls. In January a boot in a cameraman’s crutch cost him a $200 000 settlement; in March bad-mouthing the Mormons led to a record NBA fine of $50 000.
Yet, despite the off-court antics, the string of technical fouls (13 straight games in the play-offs), the fines (he cost the Bulls $2-million last season), the 14 games missed through suspension last season and the fact that his contract negotiations are still unresolved (he has offered to accept wages at the season’s end depending on his behaviour), in 1996 Rodman endorsed Carl’s Jr burger chain, Kodak, Oakley sunglasses, Mistic Beverages, Comfort Inn, the National Milk Board and Pizza Hut. In the process he made an estimated $9-million – and has also collected four NBA championship rings. Evidently good guys do not always win.
ENDS