A half-dozen surgeries and the passing of time have turned Grant Hill into a shadow of the player who averaged almost 26 points a game the season before he came to the Orlando Magic.
While those days might be long gone, the way in which he contributed to the Magic's stretch drive to the NBA playoffs has raised the possibility that Hill -- who will turn 35 in October -- could have at least another year or two left in him.
"I don't know about that. We'll have to wait and see," he said before the start of the first-round series between the Magic and the Detroit Pistons. "It's good to feel good in April."
Hill has played in exactly 200 regular-season games since leaving the Pistons seven years ago when the Magic signed him and Tracy McGrady to contracts worth almost $93 million. Until this season, he had appeared in only one game in any April.
But after missing seven games in February because of a sprained right knee and six others with a sore left foot, Hill has started every Magic game since March 11.
· When general manager Otis Smith was still the Magic's director of player development, he frequently spoke with admiration about how Pistons director of basketball operations Joe Dumars assembled a team that won a championship in 2004 despite having no one averaging as many as 18 points a game.
Smith is resisting the urge to use the best-of-seven series as a measuring stick for how far the Magic have come to becoming like the Pistons.
"It's no more or no less," he said. "They're further down the road than we are. Their guys are a little bit more mature and road-tested."
· The NBA Draft is June 28, and the Pistons will have the 15th pick in the first round as a result of the trade that sent Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo to Orlando for Kelvin Cato in February 2006. Only in 1999 have the Magic not owned a first-round pick, and they pulled off a trade with Seattle that year to obtain the rights to Corey Maggette. The Magic have three second-round picks this year, but that isn't likely to bring them any help. Travis Diener, a second-round selection in 2005, has been on the inactive list since March 14 while rookie James Augustine played only twice since a stint with the Magic's affiliate in the Development League in January.
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