“I Played With (Michael) Jordan… He Never Passed”: Grant Hill Shifts Blame for Underwhelming All-Star Numbers

Grant Hill was one of the most exciting forwards in the league back in the late 90s. The former Detroit Pistons forward was influential enough to earn seven All-Star appearances in his career. But sadly, he was stuck in the same conference as Michael Jordan every time. Hill’s All-Star highlights were showcased ahead of the big weekend, and he couldn’t help but blame the Chicago Bulls legend for his mediocre averages in All-Star games.

Hill’s co-host for NBA TV’s All-Star Friday night coverage mentioned that he had an average of 7.5 points in his All-Star career. That is a pretty good number for seven games, but the 2x NCAA champion believes he could have done more. Hill shared, “Well, first of all, those numbers would have been better, but I played with Jordan, so he never passed.” 

Clearly, MJ was not a huge fan of passing. It looks like the trend was the same in the All-Star games too! One of Hill’s most celebrated All-Star games was at the Mecca of basketball in New York.

His best performance came in the 1998 All-Star game. He received 838,692 votes, the second highest in either Conference. Of course, Jordan’s 1,028,235 votes were the highest. That’s how good of a star the Pistons great was, but anyhow, now he finds it funny that he didn’t get many passes. Jordan had 23 points in that game, while Hill had 15. 

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While the 51-year-old did not get a lot of looks from MJ, at least he got some love from the 6x champion. That is pretty rare!

Grant Hill revealed a contrasting soft side of Michael Jordan

A young Hill and many other college stars played against Jordan in the Dream Team as part of the scrimmages. He shared in a podcast, “I just wanted to go at him. Like, I played against him in the Dream Team, but I didn’t really go against him. And I crossed him up and I remember I was like gigged about that and we lost the game.” Typical MJ! 

However, he added, “I’ll tell you this: Jordan was always good to me. Like, we’d always go out, we’d go out eat…I don’t know if it was me or what, but he was always good to me.” At least Hill was lucky enough to be in Jordan’s good books, which is a huge honor! 

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