Hill ’85 coaches for NBA-leading Boston Celtics

Even as an art museum curator, however, Hill couldn’t escape basketball. Jim Waugh, the then-head coach of Lawrenceville’s basketball team, soon found out about the former NBA player’s presence on campus and asked him to help coach his team. Hill was reluctant at the outset, but before long, he was hooked on coaching.

“I enjoy teaching the game,” Hill said.

Twenty-four years after retiring from the NBA, Hill finds himself in the league once again, this time as the Boston Celtics’ assistant coach. Hill, now in his fourth year with Boston, has helped transform the Celtics from a perennial underdog in the league’s Eastern Conference into the conference’s best team. The Celtics, who finished the 2007 season with an abysmal 24-58 record, are on pace for 63 wins this year with less than a month remaining in the regular season. Commentators credit Hill and head coach Doc Rivers with the team’s dramatic turnaround.

The seeds of Hill’s coaching career, however, were planted at Princeton, not Lawrenceville. It was at Princeton that the stringy, six-foot, four-inch Brooklyn, N.Y., native first came in contact with Pete Carril, Princeton’s legendary basketball coach and Hill’s motivation for attending the University. Carril, who led the Tigers to 13 Ivy League championships and 11 NCAA Tournament berths over his 29-year tenure as Princeton’s head coach, emphasized to his players the importance of toughness, professionalism and on-the-court intensity — qualities that have rubbed off on Hill. And like Carril, Hill’s coaching style focuses on the fundamentals of the game.

“[Carril taught me] to do things right,” Hill said. “You know, if you’re going to work on passing, work on passing the right way; if you’re going to work on defense, work on defense the right way.”

Hill played four seasons with the Tigers, leading Princeton to its only National Invitational Tournament title in 1975 and earning Ivy League Player of the Year honors in 1976. But before Hill graduated, the Atlanta Hawks selected him as the ninth pick overall in the 1976 NBA Draft, and the senior left Princeton for the NBA.

Hill spent four seasons with Atlanta, where he averaged more than eight points per game, before bouncing around between Seattle, San Diego, Milwaukee and, finally, Atlanta again. But by 1984, the 30-year-old’s playing career was over. Upon retirement, Hill returned to Princeton to fulfill an eight-year-old promise he had made to Carril and his parents: to graduate from Princeton.

He did, the following year, with a degree in psychology. He took that degree to the Lawrenceville Art Museum, where he met Waugh and accidentally became the Big Red’s assistant coach.

Hill quickly moved up the coaching ranks. In 1988, the Lawrenceville administration promoted him from assistant coach to head coach, and in 1989 and 1990, he won a pair of Coach of the Year Awards after unexpectedly leading the Big Red to the New Jersey Prep School Championship game.

“I was blessed to be his assistant coach,” current Lawrenceville head coach Ronald Kane said. “He had a wonderful way of bringing out the best in kids. He was a great teacher of the game.”

After proving himself as a high school coach, Hill got an offer he couldn’t refuse: a chance to come back to Princeton as Carril’s assistant coach. Hill jumped at the opportunity. The Tigers won 67 percent of their games over Hill’s four-year tenure with the Tigers, but in 1995, opportunity again presented itself when Columbia snagged Hill to be the Lions’ head coach.

Hill’s arrival injected hope and intensity into Columbia’s struggling basketball program, and for a while it looked like the Princeton grad had a shot at pulling the Lions out of their seemingly permanent basketball slump. Hill’s team managed to pull off a 6-8 Ivy League record during the 1997-98 season, but ultimately Hill’s drive wasn’t enough to resurrect the Columbia basketball program. He was fired in 2003.

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The disappointing experience in New York, however, wasn’t without its share of lessons.

“I learned [how to] pass along the game to guys who wanted to learn,” Hill said. “And I learned about myself as a competitor.”

Again, it looked as if Hill’s basketball career was over, but again, it wasn’t. Shortly after leaving Columbia, Hill became the Atlanta Hawks’ assistant coach. His return to Atlanta reinvigorated his career prospects, and in 2004, after one year with the Hawks, Hill landed his current job with the Celtics.

With Boston, the determined 54-year-old former basketball star has added to his reputation for stoicism and intensity. Armed with the diligent work ethic he acquired from Carril, he’s poised to continue his ascendancy through the NBA’s coaching ranks. As Hill says, “You get what you want to get.”