If there were only one award for how a player can turn his career around and then the other way around, it has to go to George Hill, the young point guard for the San Antonio Spurs. Drafted to the team last season, Hill put up some of his worst performances then. Where is he headed? South Ossetia possibly, to play baseball there! This seemed to be the rant of many players in camp.

Hill clearly looked like a deer caught in the lights of Las Vegas. Absolutely insecure, the poor boy kept holding the ball until someone from the opposing team set it up. Worse, he wouldn’t even get the ball back for his teammates. If that’s not a deer in the Vegas lights, then what is? Hill’s teammates sum it up best: “When we play, our goal is to get the ball from A to B. But with Hill around the corner, you don’t have B, there’s only A.”

The arguments in favor of Hill’s defense are very few. One of the things that summed up Hill’s disappointing performance was that he was learning a new position. And that? Does that mean you commit to the team’s game plan? The other logic is that it was a new selection, and normally these guys take a while to get used to the playing conditions. Well, that sounds like a reasonable explanation!

Goal 2 pitches out of 25 games! That record is definitely not an explanation for the guy being new. Worse still, being a point guard, you can’t play defense watching guys like Ginobili move up the ranks and attack. This best summed up a rather forgetful season for George Hill, and as Gregg Propovich, another Spurs point guard, aptly puts it: “It will be good for Hill if he forgets that time in his life, otherwise he would soon be relegated to South Ossetia.” .

A year earlier, when Hill took the field with Gregg replacing Tony Parker, all he could do was knock down 7 points and allow five assists. Rest of the time-he played defense. How can a year change a player? Today, he seems to have learned the art of playing point guard. And he is doing well. Perhaps the idea of ​​going to a war-torn region to play basketball was something that made Hill focus on his homework.

Maybe a little reprimand from the coach and management worked. The irony of the fact is that Gregg Popovich can’t help but smile when he thinks of Hill’s misfortune a year ago. And his companions too. But now that the tables have been drawn, everyone can have a good laugh! On the back of the Black Sea Geopolitics, dare I say!