Annual David M. Rubenstein Conversation
2126th Stated Meeting | September 20, 2024
Induction Weekend 2024 began with an Opening Celebration that featured the first Legacy Recognition Honorees and a performance led by new member bassist Rodney Whitaker. The program also included a conversation between David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, and Grant Hill, a new member, basketball hall-of-famer, and philanthropist. An edited version of their conversation follows.
Grant Hill
Grant Hill is a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, Olympic gold medalist, sports commentator, and basketball executive as well as an investor, philanthropist, and art collector. At Duke University, he was a three-time All-American and led the Blue Devils to win two NCAA championships. He had a successful nineteen-year NBA career, largely with the Detroit Pistons. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024.
DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN: Grant, thank you for joining us this evening. When you were notified that you had been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, did you know anything about the American Academy?
GRANT HILL: It’s my pleasure to be here this evening. I must confess that I was not familiar with the Academy. But as I learned about the Academy and read about all the distinguished members who have been elected, I was struck by the thought that I’m now part of this institution that includes you and many other remarkable individuals. It was certainly a big thrill to learn about my election. But I did not know about the Academy at that time.
RUBENSTEIN: Knowing about the Academy is not a requirement. There are many qualities that we want members to have, but prior knowledge of the Academy is not necessarily one of them. Let’s shift to something that happened recently. You are the chair of USA Basketball.
HILL: Yes.
RUBENSTEIN: And USA Basketball is in charge of developing the teams that represent this country overseas, including at the Olympics that just concluded.
HILL: Correct.
RUBENSTEIN: When you were asked to be the chair of USA Basketball with all of the responsibility that goes along with that, why did you accept? If you win a gold medal, you’re not going to get extra credit. And if you lose, you’re going to get blamed. People will certainly complain to you. Did you consider that when making your decision?
HILL: It seems as if you’re saying that I have bad judgment for accepting this role! I fell in love with basketball by watching the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and dreaming and hoping one day to be a participant. And I had the opportunity in 1996 in Atlanta to play, and then years later to be in a leadership role, picking the team and selecting the coaches. Yes, I obviously felt the pressure. When we were in Paris and during some of those close games, I was thinking if we don’t win, I will be banished from coming back to the United States. Thankfully, there were some great theatrics at the end and we did win. There’s an expectation that we’ll always win, and so we felt that pressure. We lived with it for two weeks. I didn’t sleep the entire time, but certainly it was worthwhile.
RUBENSTEIN: There was a game when we were behind by double digits against Serbia. You may remember this. Were you thinking that you may have picked the wrong players? What was going through your mind during that game?
HILL: You know, it’s interesting. Sports condition you to always believe you have a chance. That’s part of competition, and that’s why upsets occur and great moments happen in sports. I’ve lived it my entire life. My father was a professional athlete in the NFL. During that game with Serbia I kept thinking, okay, if we can just chip away at this lead, if we can get some stops defensively and some momentum then we have a chance. Call me delusional, but I did believe that, and thankfully we took care of business and won that game.
RUBENSTEIN: In the final game against France, we weren’t doing so well at one point. You have a player that you put on the team, Steph Curry, and he takes these easy shots that he makes look hard. These are the three pointers that anybody could do–and he had four right at the end. Were you thinking how glad you were to have picked him, or what?
HILL: In that moment, yes. I think everyone knows who Stephen Curry is and we are all aware of his tremendous success as a basketball player. He’s revolutionized the game with his easy shots that he makes look difficult, as you described. But he really struggled up until then. He had not had a signature game or a great Olympic run. But he worked every day on his shot and you just knew in time he would have a moment. In the second half of that game, we had fifteen turnovers, and I kept asking myself why are we turning the ball over? We’re giftwrapping the game to France. We can win the game by ten points. At the end, Stephen Curry was remarkable and had a signature moment in a gold medal game.
RUBENSTEIN: Some people have said that you opted for players who were a little older, like LeBron James, who I think is thirty-eight or thirty-nine.
HILL: Yes.
RUBENSTEIN: Was it a conscious decision that you needed to pick the most famous basketball players as opposed to the younger ones who are up and coming? How did you decide it’s okay to have a thirty-nine-year-old basketball player on the team?
HILL: I’m impressed with how aware you are of the basketball scene. Are you with The Boston Globe? LeBron James will be forty in December. Kevin Durant is another player who is seasoned like Stephen Curry. These three guys have been the face of the NBA, the face of USA basketball, and globally the face of the game. And so if they wanted to play, they earned the right to be on that roster. But we needed some balance. We needed guys who were in their prime and guys a little younger who hadn’t yet entered their prime. As you said, David, you don’t want all old guys on the team.
RUBENSTEIN: At the American Academy, thirty-nine would not be old.
HILL: Exactly. Let me share a story about LeBron James. I really didn’t know LeBron that well. It is the first day of camp and we are in Las Vegas. He’s thirty-nine years old and in the best shape and running around like he’s nineteen. He’s going full speed. I think he had twenty-five dunks during that practice. The next day at breakfast I went up to LeBron and I said, “You know, when I played in the NBA and I was thirty-nine, I had twenty-five good dunks for the entire season, and you had twenty-five just yesterday. Slow down.” And he said to me, “Hey, if you don’t use it, you lose it.” So every day he was in the best condition, he was the most consistent, and he brought energy to the game. He was impressive, and we needed that to win.
RUBENSTEIN: Not everybody here this evening is from Boston. But since we are in the Boston area, there’s a player from Boston who played at Duke, Jayson Tatum, but he didn’t get much playing time in the 2024 Olympics. Why didn’t he get to play very much?
HILL: Is Jayson here or did he call you? It’s not easy. You have all these superstars, and Jayson is certainly one of them. He won a championship this year with the Celtics. He’s been a first team all-NBA player for the last three years. Let me share what a coach once told me. He said in order to have a piano recital you need a piano mover, a piano tuner, and a piano player. You can’t have all piano players. You need people to understand their roles. So we tried to balance it out. We wanted players who complemented each other. There were two games in which Jayson didn’t play because of the matchups and it became a story and something much greater than we had anticipated. But to his credit, Jayson handled it well. He went to a fantastic school, he was coached by the incredible Coach K, and it didn’t become a distraction for the team in the locker room. And we’re thankful for that. This is Jayson’s second gold medal. He’ll have other opportunities in the future.
RUBENSTEIN: Are you going to stay as the head of USA Basketball and be there for the LA Olympics?
HILL: Well, after you described the experience, I’m questioning now whether it makes sense to continue in that role.
RUBENSTEIN: You did a pretty good job. You won the gold medal.
HILL: I think I will stay on. It is an incredible honor and privilege to have that responsibility, and though there’s pressure, it’s worth it.
RUBENSTEIN: Next time could you pick at least one Jewish basketball player? I know you want to win, but just consider it. For those who don’t know Grant’s background I’ve known Grant for a long time. I’m good friends with his parents. Grant grew up in northern Virginia. His father was an all-pro football player with the Dallas Cowboys and was all-American at Yale. His mother was one of the few African American students at Wellesley, where her suitemate was Hillary Rodham. Sadly, your mother Janet, who served on several boards with me, passed away about two years ago from a brain tumor. As I remember, she was known in your family as the General because she was the disciplinarian. Is that right?
HILL: Yes, she was the disciplinarian and I was often in trouble. During the Carter administration she worked in the Pentagon. She was a special assistant to the Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander. I called her Colonel at first and she said, “No, I’m far better than a Colonel,” so she gave herself the nickname General.
RUBENSTEIN: You are an only child of two successful parents: your father is an all-American football player and your mother was a very prominent person in Washington, D.C. Did you feel any pressure to be a great athlete and a great scholar? What was it like being an only child with two parents who were super talented?
HILL: I’m an only child of two only children so yes, you can feel sorry for me. But truthfully, my parents were and are incredible people in their own right. I didn’t look at it as pressure. I saw it as inspiration. My friends looked up to Dr. J or to other public figures. My heroes were my mom and dad. I learned so much from them.
RUBENSTEIN: Your mother once told me that she forced you to take piano lessons. Is that true?
HILL: Yes, it is.
RUBENSTEIN: Do you still play the piano?
HILL: So my mother was a pianist. She was classically trained. When I was young, she shipped the piano that she grew up playing in New Orleans to our home in northern Virginia. And she convinced me to take piano lessons when I was nine years old. At the beginning I was into it, but then it becomes much more difficult. You have to practice and put the time in. At times I could be rebellious. About three or four years in I had a piano recital and I was horribly unprepared, and I might have embarrassed the family name. After that, my mom withdrew me from piano lessons. Clearly their financial investment in these lessons was not paying off. But I picked the piano up later when I was in college. You may not believe this, but a teammate of mine that you know, Christian Laettner, taught me a song on the piano when I was a freshman and so now I play the piano. I enjoy the relaxation, the creativity, the chance to learn songs that I admire, and so I do thank my mom for forcing me to take lessons.
RUBENSTEIN: When did you realize that you were unusually gifted and maybe one of the best basketball players in the country?
HILL: I think it was when I was thirteen. I played in a national tournament, and our team won. I had a chance to measure myself against other thirteen-year-olds from all over the country. And at that point I realized that I have a chance here. It didn’t mean I would be destined for the NBA, but it was eye-opening for me. Up until then my main sport had been soccer. I loved soccer, but I thought I was better than I actually was. I guess I realized then that I had a better chance to be Dr. J than Pelé.
RUBENSTEIN: The University of North Carolina heavily recruited you.
HILL: Yes.
RUBENSTEIN: Many people thought you were going to go there, and I’m sure you thought you were going to go there. How did you wind up at Duke University, the much better school? (laughter) Any regrets about going to Duke or not going to UNC?
HILL: No regrets at all. I was a North Carolina fan, but going to Duke gave me an opportunity to get to know Coach K. I think many of us are aware of his remarkable legacy and career. But if you go back to the late 1980s, there was some concern whether he could win the championship. He had gotten to the final four a number of times and come up short. He won me over during the recruiting process and as a result I got introduced to Duke University. I had four fantastic years and a relationship with Coach K that I really enjoyed, that I benefited from, and hopefully contributed to. So through basketball, through Coach K, I was introduced to Duke. I have children and it’s remarkable to think that when I was sixteen I made such an important and meaningful decision that helped shape and chart the rest of my career and life.
RUBENSTEIN: You are one of the few NBA players who earned a college degree. Many go to college for only one year before entering the NBA draft. You majored in history and political science.
HILL: Yes.
RUBENSTEIN: Did you ever think of leaving Duke early to go play basketball? What would your parents have said?
HILL: My parents would have said no. And I had no desire to leave early. I remember at the end of my junior year one of my roommates was a senior on the basketball team. His name was Thomas Hill, no relation, and he was preparing for the NBA draft. And at that moment, as he was flying off to work out with various teams in anticipation of the draft it dawned on me that I’ll be doing this next year. Things are different now in college sports but there was a real innocence back in the 1990s. There was a sense of fulfillment being a student athlete, being a part of the community, being a part of the school. I don’t know how you can really understand and get to know a school if you’re there for just one year.
RUBENSTEIN: Do you have any regrets that when you were at Duke, you got a scholarship and that was basically it? Today the best players at Duke are getting paid several million dollars a year by the university, and other schools are doing the same thing. It’s allowed by the NCAA. Do you think you got shortchanged by not getting paid by Duke?
HILL: No. I understand that intercollegiate athletics is going through a transformation right now and there’s a lot of uncertainty. And as a result, student athletes, and especially athletes from high-profile programs, are making a considerable amount of money, and I think that’s fine. Name, image, and likeness are a good thing in theory, as long as there are guardrails and rules in place. But no, I wouldn’t trade my experience at all. There’s something about being a student and learning how to stretch $20 over the course of a week that builds character and resolve. I couldn’t imagine having $1 million at the age of eighteen. I couldn’t imagine having $1,000 at the age of eighteen.
RUBENSTEIN: So Coach K successfully recruited you, and he’s telling you how great you are and your parents are listening to how he’s going to take care of you. Then you go to practice and he’s yelling and screaming at you. What’s that like?
HILL: It is not fun. During the recruiting process Coach K writes you handwritten letters, he calls you during the windows when he’s permitted to, he does everything to woo you, to recruit you, to bring you in. And then we had our first meeting as a team and Coach K is swearing and cursing. He’s intense. And I’m thinking, who is this guy? This isn’t the person who recruited me. Did I make the right decision? But it’s part of the process. As I always say, there are twelve inches between a pat on the back and pat on the butt, and as a metaphor you’ve got to do both as a parent, but also as a coach. Coach K pushed you; he challenged you; he coached you hard; but he also empowered you.
RUBENSTEIN: For people who aren’t college basketball fans, two of the most famous games were played by Duke. Duke won the national championship in 1991 and was trying to repeat that win in 1992. You were behind by one point in the game against your archrival Kentucky with two seconds to go. The coach calls a timeout and says, “We have to get two points. We’re one point behind. We’ve got two seconds to go.” What did Coach K say to you in the huddle and what did you then do that got so many people excited to say that it was one of the greatest basketball games ever?
HILL: It was really an incredible moment. We were number one all season. The pressure, the weight of that, was exhausting. We were in the regional finals, playing against Kentucky, a team that we felt we were better than, but they played well. And here we are, two seconds left. We have to go the whole length of the court. When the gentleman from Kentucky hit the shot to go up one point I was walking to the bench and thinking instead of being at the final four next weekend I guess I’ll be at Beach Week with the rest of the school. In that moment I didn’t think we were going to win. But Coach K’s brilliance was on display at a moment when there was a lot of commotion, a lot of stress, a lot riding on that timeout. As we were making our way to the bench, he came on the court, met us, looked in our eyes, and said, “We’re going to win.” So right away he establishes the vision. Now, I don’t know if he believed that we were going to win, but as a leader he said that and your leader gives you confidence in these moments. At the bench, instead of telling us what to do, instead of saying, “Grant, you make the pass the length of the court; Christian, you stand here and you catch it and you score,” he asked me, “Grant, can you make the pass the full length of the court?” And I said yes. And that’s an empowering thing. I’m saying it in front of a group and when you’re asked to do something, something that is really difficult to do, you take ownership, and in that moment I did that. And the coach asked Christian, who was at the time everybody’s all-American, he was the player of the year, he didn’t miss a shot, “Can you make the shot?” And Christian answered, “If Grant makes the pass, I’ll make the shot.” So now I’m a little nervous. Coach K took control of that moment by injecting and exuding confidence in us and then asking us if we can execute. And we say we can. I actually walked onto the court thinking we’re going to win, that we can overcome and do the unthinkable.
RUBENSTEIN: You threw the pass seventy-five feet, he caught it and got the two points, and you won. And then you went on to win the national championship. Another incredible play that some people here may know if they’re basketball fans is in a championship game against Kansas. You got an alley-oop kind of pass and it was a little bit high so rather than catch it and go down, you caught it with one hand and swooped down and did a dunk. I’ve never been able to do that myself. Is a one-handed kind of dunk something that you practiced before?
HILL: So Bobby Hurley, my teammate, one of the great point guards ever in college basketball, has the all-time assist record in the NCAA. Early in that game against Kansas, Bobby threw a bad pass and really made me work to catch it. And somehow, some way, I was able to catch the pass and make a nice play. And you know, the beauty of it is that every year they replay that play and they replay the Kentucky play. The downside of that though is that I had a really bad haircut on that dunk. Talk about poor judgment. It just shows that you shouldn’t be too trendy when you’re young.
RUBENSTEIN: You graduated from Duke, you got a degree, you played in the NBA for nineteen years.
HILL: Correct.
RUBENSTEIN: You played with four different teams and had lots of success. You set some incredible records, but you were injured for a lot of it. You had terrible ankle problems. I think Wilt Chamberlain and you are the only people who led their teams three years in a row in scoring, assists, and rebounds. For Detroit, you led in all three of those categories. What were your other teammates doing?
HILL: That’s why we struggled in Detroit. The team was not the same quality as the team at Duke, so I was called upon to do a great deal and that may have contributed to my ankle eventually giving me issues.
RUBENSTEIN: Who was the greatest basketball player you ever played against?
HILL: The greatest basketball player I ever played against was Michael Jordan.
RUBENSTEIN: If you went one-on-one with him, could you beat him?
HILL: Yes. He’s not here, right?
RUBENSTEIN: Sometimes professional athletes after their professional careers are over don’t live up to their potential in non-athletic areas. You have done incredible things since you retired. I will mention just a few: Grant is a member of the Board of Trustees of Duke University and is also on the Executive Committee of Duke University. He is a committed philanthropist. He has one of the largest and most impressive African American art collections in the United States. He is also a sports team owner, an owner of the Baltimore Orioles with me. An owner also of the Atlanta Hawks and an owner of the professional men and women soccer teams in Orlando. In addition to that he is a broadcaster for the NCAA Final Four and a broadcaster for the NBA. He is also on some corporate boards, including Campbell’s Soup.
HILL: We just changed our name to Campbell’s. Same brand.
RUBENSTEIN: Yes. And you have two daughters who are very successful in their own right, and your wife is a professional singer. Do you ever fail at anything? Is there something that you just didn’t do well at so you can make the rest of us feel not so inadequate by your being so successful at everything?
HILL: If my wife were here, she would tell you I fail in a lot of things. It’s been interesting since I retired. I think sometimes athletes struggle with putting so much into reaching the top that it consumes you in the sense of what you need to do to stay there. And whether you play for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, it defines who you are. Then when you’re done and you retire–I retired at forty, which is old in my respective sport–it can be scary and overwhelming for athletes to figure out what to do next. I think first of all having a father who went through that same thing and learning from his experiences and the experiences of his contemporaries was helpful. I tend to look at sports as if they are a microcosm of life. There are so many values that you can take from sports and apply in all facets of life. We talked about Duke and the superior education I received there, but I also learned a great deal from Coach K. I learned a lot from being in team sports. I learned from all of the ups and downs that came with that. And the same thing throughout the NBA. Being on top of the world, being one of the top five players in the 1990s, and then all of a sudden having a devastating injury that really changed the trajectory of my career. And now being back when I’m older and in a different role. The totality of all of those experiences really helped prepare me for what I’m doing now. And those are values that you learn in real time, that you learn on a public stage. I’ve had some successes and a couple of failures here and there, but for the most part I’m fulfilled. I’m doing things that I like, I’m healthy, and I’m here.
RUBENSTEIN: You’re a great role model. I want to thank you for your service to Duke University and to the country and for the great job you have done for the Olympics and what you’re going to do next time for the Olympics when you pick some younger players and maybe a Jewish player. Thank you for being with us this evening and welcome to the Academy.
HILL: Thank you.
© 2025 by David M. Rubenstein and Grant Hill
To view or listen to the presentation, visit the Academy’s website.