Sort of the forgotten man of the Sixers' peak around the turn of the century, Tyrone Hill might have been the least glamorous player to make the NBA All-Star team in the last 25 years. A gritty but offensively-limited power forward, Hill first flourished under the brutally slow-paced and methodical Mike Fratello-ran Cavaliers squads, averaging 14 points and 11 boards in his career-best '94-'95 season. Meanwhile, Tim Thomas came out of Villanova in the '97 draft with amazing hype, which the 76ers grew impatient waiting for to blossom into actual above-average play. The Sixers traded potential for results on March 11th, 1999, as Thomas was traded with Scott Williams for Hill and Jerald Honeycutt.
Honeycutt played just 13 games and scored just 25 points in his Sixers career, but Tyrone Hill played an intricate part on the Sixers during the height of the Larry Brown / Allen Iverson era, helping cement their solid defense and giving the team half of a physically dominant front court, first with Theo Ratliff and then with Dikembe Mutombo. Hill averaged a near double-double in '00-'01, the year when the Sixers made it to the Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. Hill was dealt the next season in part of a trade for Matt Harpring and Robert Traylor (who was in turn flipped for Derrick Coleman), but returned for the Liberty Ballers' '03 stretch run, albeit in a much more limited role.
Perhaps the true legacy of Hill with the Sixers is cementing those early-00s teams as one of the across-the-board ugliest NBA squads ever assembled. Iverson was never exactly a dreamboat himself, but he was still Justin Timberlake compared to the historic squad of uggos that made up his supporting cast, including Dikembe Mutombo, Todd MacCulloch, Kevin Ollie and Matt Geiger. Even amidst this atompshere of hideousness, Hill was no doubt the piece de resistance, a gaunt, cranially angular dude that probably made Sam Cassell grateful to not be the freakiest alien-looking dude in the league.
Respect.
