Why doesn’t Grant Hill get the Tom Brady treatment over conflicts of interest?

It always felt like a cruel joke that Shaquille O’Neal was a part-owner of the Sacramento Kings. The transaction literalized what was true for all of O’Neal’s time in Los Angeles. His Lakers teams owned the Kings, but O’Neal purchasing an actual stake was just a twist of the knife.

In 2022, O’Neal sold his stake in the Kings after nine years as a limited partner alongside team governor Vivek Ranadive. Ever a savvy businessman, O’Neal cashed in on new NBA rules allowing venture capital firms to buy into teams. The Hall of Famer was also selling high, just like Mark Cuban and several other owners did in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

All of that may have helped convince O’Neal to move on from his Shaq-ramento era, but the real reason O’Neal sold was to strike a deal with WynnBett. Per league rules, O’Neal could not partner with a sports gambling operator as an active owner.

It should be no surprise that team officials are banned from betting deals. The more intriguing element of O’Neal’s career during this period is not the part-time gig he sacrificed for that sportsbook bag but the one he was allowed to keep.

O’Neal bought into the Kings two years after he joined Inside the NBA and worked as a panelist on the show for the duration of his tenure as Sacramento part-owner. At a time when Tom Brady’s investment in the Las Vegas Raiders is held up as a conflict of interest for the retired QB who splits time as a game analyst at Fox, O’Neal got carte blanche from his bosses at TNT for nearly a decade in a similar situation.

That brings us to Grant Hill. The No. 3 analyst for TNT is a busy man. Hill will call his 11th NCAA tournament this spring alongside Bill Raftery. Away from the mics, Hill is also the managing director of the U.S. men’s national basketball team — and, since 2015, a part-owner of the Atlanta Hawks.

To show just how impactful Hill is across basketball, he joined Puck’s The Varsity podcast this weekend, and the conversation hardly touched on his media career. But in addition to calling games for both TNT and CBS, Hill is also reportedly a candidate to join ESPN’s roster next season when TNT loses its NBA rights. Depending on when the NBA media carousel stops spinning, Hill could even end up on ESPN’s top team.

So, what’s the difference between Hill and Brady? At face value, not much.  Sure, Hill isn’t calling the Super Bowl like Brady just did in his first season at Fox. And Hill is not nearly as famous as Brady. Hill said on The Varsity that he does not carry much responsibility in Atlanta, but Brady would likely say the same.

Hill does have sway at USA Basketball, where he works alongside the sport’s biggest stars from the junior circuit to the Olympics. We could very easily watch Hill call the Final Four this spring, getting access to the best young players in the world in production meetings. No. 3-ranked Duke has a trio of freshmen expected to be drafted in the top 10 of the NBA Draft, led by Cooper Flagg. Setting aside that Hill is also a fellow Dukie, he would have tremendous access to these players in weekly production meetings. Of course, those relationships will help during the NBA Draft or free agency when Hill is helping Atlanta recruit players or during the selection process for the 2027 FIBA World Cup or 2028 Olympics.

Working as a broadcaster helps Hill as an owner and Team USA executive the same way it helped Brady being around Detroit’s Ben Johnson in the lead-up to the NFC divisional round. In fact, Hill might even have a greater advantage given that (as far as we know) he is not subject to the same league-enforced restrictions as Brady.

Brady’s defenders throughout the season argued that these conflicts of interest were overblown. The upper hand he might get in one role due to having the other wasn’t enough of an issue for Fox executives to hesitate in hiring him or for the NFL and its owners to vote to deny his ownership stake. The most cynical would argue that these conflicts are prevalent across media, and everyone has an angle. Maybe!

However, everyone from Fox leadership to the NFL commissioner appeared to be pretty triggered by the idea that he was compromised. Across media, it spurred a debate. Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. caught some strays. The debate was punctuated by NFL reporter Mike Florio, who insisted his bosses at NBC would never sign up for such an arrangement.

Yet, between TNT and ESPN, we know of two basketball broadcasters who appear to be fine with Hill’s conflicts. Fox isn’t firing Brady. Earnhardt is a budding media star.

The media has agreed that this is a real issue, something that Brady and Fox have to address and that networks should ideally try to avoid. So why has Hill skirted it, like O’Neal before him?

To my eye, they have done so for the same reason Brady has: Their teams suck.

When Brady’s predecessor at Fox, Troy Aikman, recently defended Brady on a podcast, he claimed that when he asked Fox Sports permission to join a group bidding on an NFL team, the company had one reservation. Since this was before the legalization of sports betting, Fox didn’t address the conflict O’Neal sold to avoid. Instead, it was this: If the team Aikman owned ever made the Super Bowl, he would likely not be allowed to call it.

Aikman meant this story to defend Fox and Brady, but it also revealed the line in the sand. Perhaps it’s not about Brady or Hill having a conflict of interest, but where it lies. It would matter more if Brady owned the Eagles or Hill owned the Celtics.

They are allowed to tinker around as part-owners of irrelevant franchises. When O’Neal owned the Kings, how often was Sacramento really coming up on Inside the NBA? It wasn’t a factor. But if Brady or Hill can pull off a miracle and bring the Raiders or Hawks back from the dead, perhaps management will come knocking.

Until then, they are very influential people who happen to call games for major networks, taking advantage of the platform and access that comes with it.