O’Donnell: Grant Hill keeping it nice with extension at TNT
A FEW WINTERS AGO, BILL RAFTERY SAT in a downtown Milwaukee pub, skirting midnight with one old chum and two relatively new ones.
The main event that evening had been a Bucks-Rockets game.
The conversation turned to Grant Hill, who along with Raftery and Ian Eagle will call the NCAA men's championship game Monday (7:50 p.m., CBS).
“Grant Hill could be anything he wants to be as long as he doesn't have to stop being nice,” Raftery mused. “What a competitor. But what a nice young man. He was born that way. He was raised that way. He's never deviated. How did he win so many basketball games being so nice?”
HILL'S NATURAL MANNER netted another bankable acknowledgment this week. The princely 52-year-old signed a long-term contract extension to remain at TNT.
The announcement caught some in the industry off guard. The NBA is leaving Turner next season, moving on to the greener perimeter play of NBC and Amazon. Incumbent ESPN/ABC will retain a pricey chunk of the package.
Hill was expected to join the herd. Instead, displaying all of the capacity for independent thought that he developed at Duke, he opted to stay right where he is.
AT TNT HE WILL REMAIN a centerpiece of its college basketball coverage. Besides a prime stake in the NCAA men's tourney, the network will further inflate in 2026 with the addition of Big East and Big 12 men's games.
Hill, Raftery (who turns 82 in two weeks) and Eagle will also continue as the top-tier TV voices of the NCAA men's tournament and its Final Four — the gods of broadcast basketball willing.
NBC HAS ANNOUNCED THAT REGGIE MILLER AND JAMAL CRAWFORD will be its lead NBA analysts. (As an NBA newcomer with the Bulls from 2000-04, Crawford survived the depths of the Jerry Krause-Tim Floyd plum-dumbing and the ultimate breakup of that once coosome twosome.)
ESPN continues to pump Richard Jefferson, who admittedly shows more signs of organic life than the techno-intense Doris Burke.
BUT GRANT HILL IS ONCE AGAIN proving to be his own man.
And one who has never strayed from simply being naturally nice.
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DESPITE STARTING OUT MONDAY with a comparatively lackluster field of 16, that inaugural College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas has been drawing rave reviews for its first-class execution.
The CBC title game is Sunday (4:30 p.m., Fox). Its first Final Four included: Boise State, Nebraska, UCF and Villanova.
In a grand gesture toward transparency, the champion of the tournament will divvy up $300K from a special NIL pot. Runner-up gets $100,000. Losing semifinalists will each decide how to split $50K apiece.
THE CONCEPTION AND OPERATION of the CBC has been so crisp that some very smart basketball people are saying it's on a rapid path to leapfrog the NIT as the No. 2 postseason tournament in the land for collegiate men.
That should come as no surprise since the main promoters behind the event are Fox Sports and the highly resourced Anschutz Entertainment Group.
(Phil Anschutz — an 85-year-old billionaire — has long been a principal benefactor of the basketball programs at Kansas, his alma mater. While at KU, future Bulls sparkplug Kirk Hinrich was a particular favorite of the man. Anschutz also owns the L.A. Kings and his AEG was instrumental in the startup segment of the Chicago Fire FC.)
MULTIPLE VEGAS POWER PLAYERS — including the ultra-facile Derek Stevens of Circa Sports — have also worked overtime to get the CBC up into a quick and ascending trajectory.
Regarding the CBC vs. the NIT, here's reality:
A trip to the College Crown means up to a week at a global-class resort on Glitter Gulch for participants, complete with comped charter jet service and potential NIL jackpots.
A slog through the NIT offers the chance for three campus-site games (think Birmingham, Peoria and Stillwater, Okla.) followed by its Final Four. Those quad cappers parry at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse, which is dandy for anyone chasing the ghosts of Norman Dale and Dennis Hopper.
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GOLF FLAGS THROUGHOUT THE REGION are at half-staff following the death of Rory Spears earlier this week.
Spears was a classic Chicago sports media grinder who eventually settled into a happy groove as an accomplished links chronicler. Daily Herald golf columnist Len Ziehm was a key career patron.
Spears periodically touched mainstream sports. Perhaps most prominently, he was a reliable contributor to the first era of “The Score” — then daytime-only at AM-820 — from 1992-95.
SAID LONGTIME COLLEAGUE STEVE KASHUL: “Just a terrific individual who had several part-time jobs covering games and gathering postgame sound for all our local Chicago professional teams. But golf was his passion, and I hope he gets to play a couple of gems up in heaven.”
Spears got his start in the game as an underaged ball washer on the driving range at Rob Roy. That was back when the Prospect Heights spread had both a prime 18-hole course and a nine-hole sportier layout.
Visitation begins noon, Sunday at Ahlgrim Family Funeral Home on Northwest Highway in Palatine. Services will start at 4 p.m.
Sharpest scorers celebrating Spears and his life drive will note that Ahlgrim's has a nine-hole miniature golf course in its basement.
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.