George Hill has found a new home as the perfect role player for the Milwaukee Bucks. It’s not the first time he’s redesigned himself.
A quarter of the way through the NBA season, the Bucks have established that last year’s 60-win campaign was not a fluke. At 18-3, they are tied with the Lakers for the best record in the NBA and they’ve pulled that off despite losing Malcolm Brogdon this summer — who is off averaging 19.4 points and 8.0 assists per game for the Indiana Pacers.
Milwaukee has survived Brogdon’s departure, in large part, because of the incredible play of George Hill. He has stepped right into Brogdon’s role, coming off the bench, defending both backcourt positions, hitting open shots with absurd efficiency and keeping the offense humming as a secondary creator. It’s the role Hill was born to play but doing it to this degree and for a team that looks an awful lot like an NBA Finals favorite is new ground for a player who already lived at least four other basketball lives.
The surprising contributor: 2008-2012
Hill was taken with the No. 26 pick in the 2008 NBA Draft by the San Antonio Spurs and immediately became a key role player off the bench. After a four-year collegiate career at IUPUI, Hill was polished as both a ball-handler and a complementary scorer with the size and wingspan to defend both guard positions.
Across three seasons with the Spurs, he averaged 9.9 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game, knocking down 37.8 percent of his 3-pointers and functioning as a key cog in San Antonio’s formidable defense. This was a transition period for the Spurs but they were always in the playoffs and Hill picked up 20 games and 600 minutes of fairly high-leverage playoff experience.
At this point in time, the Spurs’ track record for identifying useful players, putting them in a position to succeed and then reaping the benefits was fairly well established. However, Hill still stood out, both now and then, as one of the biggest success stories. Of course, the most important thing he did for the Spurs was probably helping them land Kawhi Leonard in the 2011 draft-night trade that sent Hill to the Indiana Pacers.
Hill finished off this period of his career — promising young glue guy — during the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, his first in Indiana, coming off the bench behind Darren Collison and playing a similar combo-guard role to the one he played with the Spurs.
The starting point guard: 2012-2014
After the 2011-12 season, the Pacers traded Collison to the Mavericks and moved Hill into the starting point guard position. Over the next two seasons, the Pacers won better than 60 percent of their regular-season games, made consecutive Eastern Conference Finals appearances and posted some of the greatest era-adjusted defensive efficiencies in league history.
In a starting role, Hill had only slightly more offensive responsibility, often deferring to the shot creation abilities of Paul George and Lance Stephenson, as well as the team’s fetish for Roy Hibbert post-ups. He averaged 12.2 points, 4.1 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game, shooting 36.7 percent on 3-pointers, with the major difference simply being more minutes on the floor.
Hill was often seen as the weak link on these Pacers teams, maligned for perceived offensive passivity and often sent out in fanciful trade machine imaginings that netted Indiana a point guard upgrade. The truth is he was incredibly important in that complementary role — hitting 3s, attacking as a secondary or tertiary creator, playing suffocating perimeter defense — the stakes were simply higher for his minutes now than they had been in the past.
The star: 2014-15
In retrospect, it may seem like a blip, but the 2014-15 season is the answer to anyone who thinks Hill’s talents had been maxed out previously. Rapid decline had taken hold of Roy Hibbert and David West. Lance Stephenson left for the Charlotte Hornets and Paul George missed all but six games as he recovered from a catastrophic leg injury suffered over the summer.
In the midst of this chaos, and a rotation that featured Solomon Hill, Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Miles, C.J. Watson and a 34-year-old Luis Scola among its most-used players, Hill held the team together. Thrust into offensive primacy, he responded by nearly doubling his usage and assist rates, cutting his turnovers and increasing his true shooting percentage. He averaged 16.1 points, 5.1 assists, 4.2 rebounds and 1.0 steals per game and the team was 26-17 in games that he played in. Unfortunately, he missed all of November and nearly all of December with injuries of his own and the hole was too deep for Indiana by the time he returned.
Hill’s career has greatly been defined by team context. But let the record show that on the lone occasion when the stars aligned for him to be the primary offensive engine of a competitive basketball team, he was more than up to the challenge.
The nomad: 2015-2018
His last season in Indiana, 2015-16, brought the return of Paul George and the addition of free agent black hole Monta Ellis. Hill’s offensive primacy receded, the calls for a point guard upgrade intensified and a period of wandering began. At the end of that season, he was traded to the Utah Jazz in a trade that brought Jeff Teague to the Pacers.
Hill had a career year with the Jazz, complementing the offensive creation of Gordon Hayward and Rodney Hood but Utah wasn’t interested in paying what it would have taken to keep Hill beyond that season. In the summer of 2017, he signed a three-year deal with the Sacramento Kings, suffered mightily under the organizational malaise and was traded mid-season to the Cavaliers, catching on for LeBron’s last ride. Hill’s numbers are solid and remarkably consistent throughout this era as he bounced between teams hoping he was the missing piece of the puzzle, only to discover they were missing a lot more than just what Hill could provide.
Hill started the 2018-19 season with the suddenly LeBron-less Cavs, before a mid-season trade brought him to the surging Milwaukee Bucks.
The perfect veteran: 2018-20
Hill was quiet in finishing up the 2018-19 regular season with the Bucks but was huge in their ultimately too-brief postseason run. In 15 playoff games last season, Hill averaged 15.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.2 steals per 36 minutes, shooting 53.4 percent from the field and 41.7 percent on 3-pointers. On offense, he gave Milwaukee everything that Eric Bledsoe couldn’t, without taking anything off the table at the defensive end.
This season, with Brogdon gone and making a star-turn for the Indiana Pacers, Hill has been nothing short of spectacular. He’s playing just 21.7 minutes per game but averaging 16.5 points, 5.3 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 1.2 steals per 36 minutes, shooting 53.7 percent from the field and 52.5 percent on 3-pointers. In 413 minutes, he’s racked up 61 assists to just 14 turnovers. And, as always, he’s playing fantastic and versatile defense in the backcourt.
Hill’s career has come full circle. He’s playing a similar role to the one he did for the Spurs so many years ago. But with 11 years of experience and accumulated veteran savvy, he’s now fully actualized. He is capable of stepping up as the starting point guard if Bledsoe goes down or his inconsistency becomes untenable. If Giannis Antetokounmpo were to miss any time during the regular season, Hill can shoulder more offensive primacy and keep the machine running for a brief time. Or, if things go according to plan, he can just continue to be the perfect complementary piece for the best team in the NBA.