Well, this is kind of weird: apparently, Grant Hill and Jaylen Brown got into it a bit over how Hill put together Team USA.
Hill, of course, is now running USA Basketball, and in 2024, he passed on Brown when Kawhi Leonard had to withdraw, taking Derrick White instead, and Brown was not happy about it.
Brown, who passed on a lucrative contract with Nike in 2021, isn’t the first guy to deal with shoe politics and the Olympics. Some members of the 1992 Dream Team, who weren’t on Team Nike, used American
flags to cover Nike apparel during the medal ceremony.
However, given Hill’s long presence in the public eye, and his good-guy reputation, it’s hard to believe that Brown would accuse him of this sort of corruption. Hill himself wore FILA shoes for the majority of his career before switching to Nikes later.
According to the article linked above, Hill said he thought he and Brown had worked things out, but perhaps not as much as he had thought.
The thing is, as the US eventually figured out, picking an Olympic team isn’t the same thing as an All-Star team. This was a great contribution in years past by Jason Kidd, who only wanted to be the point guard, leaving the offense to others, and Kobe Bryant, who actually volunteered to be a defensive stopper.
White was willing to be a role player, which is basically what he excels at anyway. Guys like Jayson Tatum, who is an All-Star, didn’t get the minutes everyone expected him to get, and he didn’t even get in two games at all.
The bottom line is putting together a roster that can play together and win, and that is never going to get easier. For instance, France could bring Alex Sarr, Zaccharie Risacher, Rudy Gobert, Bilal Coulibaly, and, most importantly, Victor Wembanyama.
Germany could be very good, as could Greece, Spain, Australia, and Canada, which might bring Shae Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Charles Bediako, and Dillon Brooks. A lot of people don’t like Brooks, but he has no problem accepting a role on his team.
The talent gap, in other words, is not what it used to be, and all of those teams spend a lot more time together than ours will.
So it’s possible that Brown might be a Top Ten player in the NBA, and still not have an ideal role on the 2028 Olympic team.
His smarter play would to have asked, hey, what can I improve on, or what role could I have, if I were on the Olympic team?
And that’s probably a conversation that Hill would be happy to have.
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