Grant Hill and Jalen Rose Bury Rift
There was always a chance for dialogue, but there was a greater chance of a rift between Jalen Rose and Grant Hill following the ESPN documentary Fab Five released this spring.
In that documentary, Rose, a former Michigan basketball player, said he and his so-called Fab Five teammates felt resentment toward Hill and his school, Duke. He explained that as college kids, they felt that the Blue Devils only recruited Black players who were “Uncle Toms.” The mainstream media jumped all over that brave admission, as if Rose, a veteran of the NBA and now an ESPN basketball analyst, still had those same feelings about Hill and Duke.
With all that Rose now has to lose, maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest about his feelings at the time. The documentary and Rose’s statements were given more legs when Hill, a classically trained pianist from an affluent two-parent home, was moved to pen a piece in the New York Times about what Rose said.
What was sad is the entire situation was blown out of proportion. Rose, 38, shouldn’t have been criticized now for his feelings a teenager.
It’s good to hear that both Rose and Hill have obviously had time to talk and discuss their differences as men. And apparently Hill, a former Detroit Piston, has agreed to lend his support to The Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, set to open in Detroit this fall.
That is huge, and much more telling about where these two are now as men than their feelings as college kids.
"Any time, for example, you have a critically acclaimed piece like the Fab Five documentary has been, you're going to have 99 percent of the people that love it, but when you have the brutal honesty, you're going to have that 1 percent on the other side of the coin, so to speak," Rose said Saturday to the Detroit media. "I definitely talked to Grant and reached out to Coach K, and again clarified that that was how I felt as a high school recruit."
(Photos from left: Christian Petersen/Getty Images, Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)