Kyle Hines has just become the first player in the history of the EuroLeague for games played, another pearl to add to his series of records, triumphs, milestones. Perhaps the most significant one. “I watched my first EuroLeague game in Rome when I was in Veroli. Maccabi was there. I was sitting high up, nosebleed seats,” he says. He never thought that one day he would play hundreds of those games. In fact, he remembers that game because he commented on it from Palaeur on Twitter, confessing to his followers how much he would have liked to play at that level one day. Life can be surprising sometimes.
Sicklerville, New Jersey, is a small city that is home to 50,000 residents along the American East Coast, crossed by the Atlantic City Expressway which in 40 minutes takes you straight to the ocean, to one of the gambling capitals. But the people of the town founded in 1851 by John Sickler, hence the name, prefer to gravitate towards the Delaware River and the city of Philadelphia. Under regular traffic conditions, you can reach the heart of the City of Brotherly Love in 25 minutes. Kyle Hines is from Sickerville and is a Philadelphia sports fanatic, like his younger brother Tyler, like their father. They say that his grandfather placed the basketball in his crib, but he also tried athletics, karate, and football. But when it came time to go to high school, and he had 20 miles to travel every morning to get to Camden, basketball became his priority. Fortunately, Timber Creek High School opened in 2001, much closer to home and more accessible from Sicklerville. “I am proud to have been part of a brand-new school. Mine was one of the first classes to graduate. Every summer when I come home, I like to see how the school has evolved and developed. I’m happy to help,” he says.
The basketball team’s coach was Gary Saunders, brother of Leon Saunders who had been Julius Erving’s teammate at Roosevelt High School on Long Island (it is in the New York area but not far from South Jersey where Kyle comes from) in the 1960s. The legendary Doctor J, at that time, proudly wore number 42. Saunders decided that Hines had a similar personality and wanted him to wear the 42, too. “For me the motivation is an honor, Doctor J was a legendary player, but also a great person,” says Kyle. Yes, it is a true story.
Kyle Hines was an excellent player at Timber Creek, but when you are excelling in a small town in southern New Jersey, far from the eyes of big colleges, it is not easy to get the so-called “Exposure”. Hines was built like a linebacker, but his game was the power game, and he should have been a seven-footer to be taken seriously. In truth, lot of scouts have always missed on of Hines biggest trait, his incredible ball-handling skills. He’s always been someone capable of dribbling like a point guard and moving at a high-speed. Mitch Buonaguro, back then the assistant coach at UNC-Greensboro, was the first to notice Hines talent and reported it to his head coach, Fran McCaffery who is from Philadelphia. So, Kyle was recruited.
His Spartans immediately became a powerful team in the Southern Conference. The point guard was Ricky Hickman, Kyle Hines was the center. Five European championships in a line-up. At UNC-Greensboro, Hines set all kinds of school records, including being conference player of the year as a junior and finishing second to Steph Curry – who played at Davidson – as a senior. His college career was one for the ages: he was one of the only six players in history to have amassed at least 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 300 blocks in his career. The other five? Four number 1 picks in the draft (Pervis Ellison, David Robinson, Tim Duncan, and Derrick Coleman) and one number 2 pick (Alonzo Mourning).
But not everything went smoothly: after two years, Coach McCaffery left UNC-Greensboro to move up the ranks to Siena College, and now coaches a prestigious school like Iowa. In short, he has come a long way. Mitch Buonaguro followed his boss. In college basketball at that time, changing schools was allowed without observing a one-year stop, only in exceptional cases, such as when a coach leaves one job for another. Hines could have taken advantage of it, gone to a school that could give him more exposure, but he felt comfortable at UNCG and decided to stay with the new coach, Mike Dement. Changing often is not for him. “It wasn’t easy because Coach McCaffery was one of the main reasons why I went to UNCG,” he says.
His draft class was 2008. He had played for a small school, in a conference considered weak, but with great numbers and during a time dominated by Steph Curry’s Davidson. Hines showed up in Portsmouth, at the pre-draft camp for second-tier seniors, turning on many radars with his energy and amazing athletic prowess. When they checked on him, he reported an unusual 3.8 percent body fat, almost inhuman. But his height was immediately a problem. With shoes he was six feet, five inches and 25. The wingspan was 7-foot-1. Othello Hunter and James Gist, two players who later made EuroLeague history, were in the same class. Hines was labeled, on the NBA’s official website, as a small forward/power forward. Nobody had the guts to identify a 6-foot-5 player as a center. Yet, in Portsmouth, Hines was devastating. In three days of games, he shot 22-for-28 from the field, 78.6 percent, an all-time tournament record. He scored 17.3 points per game, fourth overall. He made 10 blocks, grabbed 7.3 rebounds per game and made 2.3 steals per game. But he wasn’t picked. He went undrafted. He listened to all the picks. His name never came up.
didn’t take it well, honestly. He tried out for Oklahoma City, for Charlotte, the team closest to the college he had attended for four years, where he had his jersey retired when he was still playing on the team, where they talked about him as the best player ever. Then he was signed to try-out for Cleveland. But the options didn’t look good, even though he was invited to two summer leagues. First in Orlando and then in Las Vegas. “In Orlando – says Antonello Riva, then Veroli’s general manager in the Italian second division, a former Olimpia Milano legend from the ‘90s – he enters the court, and they make him play as a small forward. A disaster. I turned to my coach, Andrea Trinchieri, and asked him how he thought he could be a player for us. But after a few days we went to see him again in Las Vegas, he was playing for Charlotte. His team was losing, they were playing bad. Then he subbed in and changed everything. He played in his position: all of a sudden, we had blocks, dunks, fastbreaks. I thought we had to sign him before someone else did. Over two seasons in Veroli, he was always the first to come and the last to leave the gym. His career is well deserved, because he has always had that seriousness, that concentration and resiliency. He is great.”
They signed him and he stayed two years. “I was in a small village, up in the mountains, 5,000 people probably, but I wouldn’t have become who I am without Veroli. I met important people, like Jerome Allen and Miky Mian on the court, Trinchieri and Massimo Cancellieri as coaches, Antonello Riva as general manager. I was a kid who had never traveled. The city was small, but it adopted me, they did everything to allow me to feel protected, to make sure I was ok, I was living ok, they invited me for dinner,” he says. It is easy to say now that everything began in Veroli and everything was immediately clear. It wasn’t at all. A way undersized center didn’t convince anyone, even though with him Veroli won the second division Italian Cup twice. “Before going to college I had never left South Jersey and Philadelphia, before Veroli I had never been anywhere in the world. It opened my mind. I had to force myself to speak Italian. But in thirty minutes I could pass by the Colosseum. There are people who save their all lives to be able to see the Colosseum one day. I could see it any random Tuesday morning. I’ve never forgotten how lucky I was.”
The scout from Bamberg was called Brandon Rooney. It was he who tipped off his general manager, Wolfgang Heyder. “They had won the German title and decided to sign a kid who came from the Italian second division. No one else would have done it,” he recalls gratefully. The coach was the Canadian Chris Fleming, who is now an assistant coach in Chicago in the NBA, who built the team around him. He stayed in Germany for a year, before Nicolò Melli arrived on the same team, won the German championship as MVP and got to know the EuroLeague. He scored 20 points on his debut in Rome, where he had daydreamed of playing at that level one day. The second game was a resounding home win over Olympiacos. Maybe that’s when they decided to take him themselves. The Greeks were fighting to win the title, the coach was the great Dusan Ivkovic and the general manager Christos Stavropoulos, who would later sign him for Olimpia, again. There was great skepticism. The answer was two EuroLeague championships in two years. In his first year, he didn’t play particularly well in the Final Fours, but he was decisive in the quarter-finals series won against Siena. In Olympiacos’ three wins, he scored 49 points with 20 rebounds. The following season, at the Final Four in London, he had 13 points and 10 rebounds in the semifinal win against CSKA and 12 points (4-for-4 from the field, 4-for-5 from the free throw line), five rebounds, three steals and three blocks in the final against Real Madrid. By then he was already a legend.
But what he did goes beyond wins. In the two years in Piraeus, Hines paved a way, he demonstrated that undersized centers could work just fine in Europe and can do it even without being great shooters from outside. “I believe that Michael Batiste at Panathinaikos was the first, but basketball has evolved in such a way as to allow me the career I have had, despite my size, for example in defense where now you switch all the time. This helped me,” he explains. Kyle Hines won the EuroLeague twice more in Moscow, in 2016 and again in 2019 when he played alongside Sergio Rodriguez. At CSKA, coached in his first year by Ettore Messina, he twice became EuroLeague defender of the year and was finally included in the All-decade team. “When I started playing in the EuroLeague, in Bamberg, I would never have imagined anything like this, such a long career, all the wins and all the Final Fours,” he confessed. In Milan, he has won the defensive player of the year trophy one more time. Maybe they should rename the award after him. In Moscow, Hines arrived in 2013 and his streak of Final Four appearances continued. The first was in Milan. Then he won the championship in 2016 and 2019, the latter playing alongside Sergio Rodriguez.
“In my career I have been lucky: I played near Rome and saw the Colosseum, I was in Athens and walked on the track of the first modern Olympics, living a few feet from the sea, I was in Moscow regularly passing through Red Square. And basketball took me to places I would otherwise never have seen”, he confessed in the United States where in the summer he is active with camps and activities for kids, together with his brother Tyler and his wife Gianna, a former player inducted in the Adelphi University’s Hall of Fame, with whom he has three beautiful children. “When I was young there were no camps and opportunities in our area, we had to go outside or to the Philadelphia area, so we thought we would help those in our position,” he explained.
Hines arrived in Milan in the summer of 2020 and in Milan he extended his streak of Final Four participation. No American has played as many Final Fours or won as many titles as he has. He always did it with class, style, education, appreciation for what he found in Europe. The American players, not just his teammates, look at him like they look at a legend, only then the legend goes on the court and keep doing his thing. He went there more than any other player. This is huge.The Americans come late in the EuroLeague and finish playing before the Europeans, for obvious reasons. This is why Hines’ numbers are so amazing. Being the ultimate team player, however, the statistic that means the most is that of titles and games won. “If I look back – he concludes – I have no regrets, I got to know Europe, I played in the EuroLeague, I had many experiences, I won a lot, I played with great players and for great coaches, for some of the most historic clubs in the world. I always had the dream of playing in the NBA, but today I’m kind of happy that it didn’t come true. I understood at a certain point that my real dream was another, and it was here in Europe. During my first four years in Europe, I thought I was on a path and that I would end up playing there, in the NBA. But after four seasons, I was in Athens, I stopped thinking about it,” he says.
A clip with its spectacular actions can be achieved through a miraculous, unexpected block, generated not so much by his jumping ability, but by strength, timing, and speed. Or it can be about a fastbreak, led as a ball handler and closed by an assist. Offensive rebounds are his signature trait. He is almost more effective in offense than in defense. But its secret is in the seriousness with which it prepares himself, his dedication, his smartness. And then all this became charisma. Kyle Hines is to modern day basketball what Dino Meneghin was to 1980s basketball. It is never a matter of personal stats; it is all about the only thing that really matters. It is all about winning.
