Embiid, hoops legend share unique bond
Philadelphia basketball fixture tutors ailing 76ers center on patience
PHILADELPHIA – A man named Sonny Hill, a basketball legend in Philadelphia, sits in a chair next to Joel Embiid’s stall inside the 76ers’ locker room.
After most Sixers home games, Hill holds a box score, and he and Embiid engage in conversation.
“It’s just private conversations,” Hill told USA TODAY after a recent playoff game. “It’s not all basketball. It’s life. Just being there at a time when things are not going well. See, a lot of people will be around you when things are going well. But not many people are going to be around when things are not going well.”
It’s not going well for Embiid right now.
He has not been at his best in the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals series against the Raptors, feeling under the weather with some kind of bug. He battled gastroenteritis in Game 2 and texted coach Brett Brown the morning of Game 4 on Sunday, saying he hadn’t slept all night because he wasn’t feeling well. He had just 11 points on seven shots.
“I’m just not myself,” Embiid
told reporters after the Game 4 loss.
Hill, who is an executive adviser for the Sixers, is around for times like these, not when Embiid is scoring 33 points, grabbing 10 rebounds and blocking five shots, as he did in the Sixers’ Game 3 victory.
It is a unique friendship between 82year-old Hill, who is a living history of basketball, and 25-year-old Embiid, who didn’t start playing basketball until he was 15.
“What I understand the most is when he talks about patience,” Embiid told USA TODAY. “Not everything can come now because we both know how much potential I still have that people really still haven’t seen. So you can’t get too high, you can’t get too low. That’s what he’s about.”
Hill met Embiid in 2014, Embiid’s first season with the Sixers. But Embiid didn’t play that season due to injury. Hill wanted to make sure Embiid wasn’t discouraged.
“Our relationship goes back before he got on the basketball court,” Hill said. “His personality and mine kind of clicked. One word came to another.”
Said Embiid: “He just started with a simple conversation. I didn’t anticipate it, but it’s been great.”
The two began having regular conversations, and Embiid learned who Hill is and why he is revered in this city.
Born here in 1936, Hill grew up playing basketball and spent two years in college before joining the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League, a high-level semipro league that was the precursor to the Continental Basketball Association.
His claim to fame is the creation of the Sonny Hill Community Involvement League in 1968. It became the premier amateur league for the best players from Philadelphia and the region, including Kobe Bryant.
“I go all the way back to Eddie Gottlieb (the former Philadelphia Warriors coach who helped create the NBA in the 1940s),” Hill said. “I go back to the Globetrotters. I grew up with Wilt (Chamberlain).
“I raised Kobe. I raised his father (Joe Bryant), and his uncle, John ‘Chubby’ Cox. You plant good seeds, you get back good returns. Germinate them, and they’ll grow.”
Known as The Mayor of Basketball, Hill was awarded the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Mannie Jackson Human Spirit Award, given to individuals “who have found the game of basketball to be a contributing aspect to their personal growth and accomplishment, a place to develop an understanding of others, and an avenue that helped shape that individual’s growth into a recognized visionary and leader.”
Hill also was an analyst on the radio for the Sixers and later in the mid-1970s an NBA analyst for CBS on TV. He still has a weekly radio show on Philadelphia’s WIP-94.1 FM.
“Just hearing his name, talking about Wilt and how much basketball he knows and has seen before, you always want to lean on him,” Embiid said. “It’s great, especially for me after starting playing basketball so late and watching basketball for the first time in 2009. You lean on guys like that, and it makes it so much better.”
Hill likes telling Embiid about Chamberlain.
“Because he is a tall guy, I enlightened him about Wilt and informed him about how great Wilt was and the fact that he has — in this era — to be a little bit like Wilt. No one will ever be like Wilt,” Hill said. “But in this era, where the game is a different game, the game is not (a) dominant game for big guys.
“He’s a big guy and mobile and can do the things he can do, and he also has a very bright mind. With that combination, we just talk about the history of the big man and how important it is for him to be able to do the things he does on the floor.”
Following games when they look at the box score, Hill likes to point out how much Embiid contributed in limited minutes.
Embiid says Hill also likes to point out how many offensive rebounds he had.
“It’s always about learning,” Embiid said.
This has been a tough series for Embiid. He wants to dominate. He wants to lead the Sixers to the conference finals. But he’s not 100%.
“I’m there when things are not going well and just encourage him,” Hill said, “and keep his spirit up and enlighten him about the game of basketball.”