Depending on who you ask, Grant Hill either nearly became a Celtic last summer or knew all along that he was going to remain a Sun.

Even the Phoenix swingman, who has enjoyed a late-career renaissance as a Sun, seemed a little unsure of the machinations prior to tonight’s game against the Celtics.

“Man, there was a lot going on at the time,” he said. “I was trying to gather a lot of information, trying to sort out all of the teams I was looking at. I was certainly very interested, and it was very flattering to have their interest.

“I can tell you that I have a lot of respect for Danny Ainge, Doc Rivers and (Celtics owner) Steve Pagliuca, who’s a fellow Dukie, of course,” said Hill. “But (Phoenix) was just the right place. Boston has put together a great team, and they have great guys, but (Phoenix) just felt like home to me.”

Rivers, who coached Hill in 0rlando, where he mostly waited for this snakebitten star to recover from injuries, believes Hill was close to becoming a Celtic.

He also believes that Hill wasn’t ready to come off the bench, ala Rasheed Wallace or Marquis Daniels.

“We were very close,” said Rivers. “He changed his mind and decided to stay put. He just knew who they were - it was that simple. But I think at the end of the day it came down to him not being ready to come off the bench. He wanted to play a lot of minutes.”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 7:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.