Like a few before and some after him, many anointed Grant Hill the next Michael Jordan. His arrival in the NBA was good timing since MJ was recently retired from professional basketball. Through his first year, he was living up to the hype and bringing a new kind of excitement to Detroit. Signed to FILA, they wasted no time in putting the young man on advertisements and lacing him up with his signature shoe the Grant Hill.
Coming off an excellent career at Duke, where he helped capture two NCAA Championships and was an important part to increasing Coach K’s record 1,000+ victories, Hill was living up to the hype. His play created plenty of fans, even outside of Pistons fans, and on this day in 1995 he became the first ever rookie to lead the NBA All-Star voting. With 6,254,427 ballots submitted, his name was on 1,289,585 of those. Hill proved the fans right has he had a successful All-Star game and ended up with co-Rookie of the Year honors with Jason Kidd. If you want to rock some FILA Grant Hill’s finding originals might be difficult but they were recently re-released under the name The 95 which can be found on eBay.
