Grant Hill: 1996 U.S. basketball team players avoided being leading scorer because of drug testing

Being a leading scorer is something a lot of basketball players take pride in and devote themselves to. But according to Grant Hill, the members of the 1996 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team deliberately tried not to be the leading scorer in each contest.
Not for unselfish, team-first motives either. But because they were afraid of having to submit to a drug test after.
Hill and his teammates on the gold medal-winning Atlanta squad hated being tested not because they were worried about testing positive for anything but rather because, as he told Bonnie Bernstein on "The Dan Patrick Show" on Wednesday, the testing process was a huge pain in the you-know-what.
"It was actually pretty funny — nobody on the team wanted to be the leading scorer in those games, in the Olympic games," Hill said. "Because whoever was the leading scorer, ended up having to be drug tested.
"And the reason for that is the drug testing process, you’d be there for two hours after the game. And so nobody wanted to be there and have to go through that whole process. So, if you watch those games and you watch the highlights at the end of the games, everyone is being super unselfish passing the ball. Because no one wants to shoot."
Despite guys such as Hill, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, and John Stockton practically playing a game of "hot potato" with the basketball, Team USA's average margin of victory in those Olympics was 32.3 points. Even the threat of a loathsome two-hour drug test couldn't stop U.S. basketball that year.
Listen to Hill's entire interview here.
Photo: Getty Images
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