"I've done a lot of basketball drills, not a whole lot of competitive stuff. I have basically been in the gym everyday working on my game, working on the time off that I've had from the game, just getting myself prepared mentally and physically for the season"
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Grant Hill is selling something more complicated than readiness: legitimacy. The language is plain, almost stubbornly unglamorous, and that is the point. “A lot of basketball drills” and “not a whole lot of competitive stuff” draws a line between controlled rehab and the messy truth-test of live play. He’s preempting the obvious doubt: if you haven’t been in real competition, can you still be Grant Hill? By admitting the gap up front, he makes the rest of the statement feel earned rather than spun.
The repetition of “working” does quiet PR labor. It turns absence into industry. Hill isn’t describing a comeback as a heroic narrative; he’s framing it as a daily job, a grind with time cards. “Everyday” signals discipline but also anxiety: the fear that stopping, even briefly, means slipping behind in a league that doesn’t wait. The phrase “time off that I’ve had from the game” is a soft euphemism for what athletes hate naming directly - injury, fragility, the body’s betrayal. He turns that lost time into usable material, as if he can metabolize it into improvement.
The clincher is “prepared mentally and physically.” In athlete-speak, that pairing is a tell: the body can be measured, the mind has to be asserted. Hill is managing expectations, asking fans and teammates to see progress where there may not yet be proof, while signaling to himself that the season is less a return than a test of identity.
The repetition of “working” does quiet PR labor. It turns absence into industry. Hill isn’t describing a comeback as a heroic narrative; he’s framing it as a daily job, a grind with time cards. “Everyday” signals discipline but also anxiety: the fear that stopping, even briefly, means slipping behind in a league that doesn’t wait. The phrase “time off that I’ve had from the game” is a soft euphemism for what athletes hate naming directly - injury, fragility, the body’s betrayal. He turns that lost time into usable material, as if he can metabolize it into improvement.
The clincher is “prepared mentally and physically.” In athlete-speak, that pairing is a tell: the body can be measured, the mind has to be asserted. Hill is managing expectations, asking fans and teammates to see progress where there may not yet be proof, while signaling to himself that the season is less a return than a test of identity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Training & Practice |
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