The Story Behind Grant Hill’s Notorious 1991 Final Four Haircut

Jan 28, 2023 - 1:00 PM

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For a lot of Duke fans, the Grant Hill alley-top in the 1991 title game against Kansas is iconic. It’s something you can watch again and again: Bobby Hurley threw the pass far too high...but Hill just went up and got it. Billy Packer was amazed.

The rest of us can watch it over and over again, but Grant?

Not so much.

As you may have seen or possibly remember, he had a terrible haircut which he got in Durham.

To make things worse, Mike Krzyzewski explicitly told his team not to anything crazy: “[Coach K] said before the game, look, I don’t want y’all doing anything crazy, like going bald or do something different than you would normally do. Now I would just cut it down and bald it, but back then, it was 1991, it was a different time.”

So he was stuck with it.

Apparently the barber was an alcoholic (life lesson - no alcoholics with sharp instruments around your scalp) and Hill’s roommate Antonio Lang got a good laugh out of it, which Hill apparently didn’t appreciate. It’s a pretty funny story.