Hill to Sign With Rotterdam Club

A stellar basketball career will last at least one more year.

Tim Hill, senior point guard on the Harvard men's basketball team, will sign a one-year contract this week to play professionally with a Rotterdam club in the Netherlands.

Hill, who over the course of the last four seasons has staked a strong claim to the title of best point guard in Harvard history, will take the biggest road trip of his life in August, heading overseas for training camp preceding a seven-month season.

"I'm really excited about it," Hill said. "How many guys can say that they've been a professional basketball player? It's been a lifetime goal of mine."

"It's a great opportunity, and I'm hoping Rotterdam will be a good place to play professionally," Hill added. "It's a chance to live outside the country for an extended period of time. The only other time I've left the U.S. was in high school, when my team played some games in France."

Hill said that although he has not formally signed yet, the contract is "a done deal," and has already been approved by the ownership of the Rotterdam club. He expects to sign some time this week.

The contract provides a $2,000-per-month salary, with built-in individual and team performance incentives. In addition to competing during the season, which runs from September-March, Hill will be responsible for participating in club-sponsored clinics three times weekly.

The team will also provide Hill with an apartment and car.

The process began in mid-April, when Hill signed a player-agent contract with the Netherlands-based Courtside firm, where he is represented by Jan Lugtenburg. In order to secure that contract, Hill had to compile a package including game footage of himself and a tally of statistics and career highlights.

Once inked by Courtside, Hill waited while the agency looked for potentially interested parties around the Netherlands.

"I'm glad it's been such a fluid process," Hill said. "Once I signed the player-agent contract, that gave the agency the ability to shop the market, and this team in Rotterdam popped up pretty quickly. The only effort I had to put out was marketing myself to the agency."

League rules allow three imported players to each club, and Rotterdam carries a Yugoslav and an alumnus of the Atlantic-10 conference's Dayton.

Hill follows former teammate Kyle Snowden '97, who has played professional ball in Luxembourg.

"I've been talking with Kyle over e-mail all year, and he's had nothing but positives to say about it," Hill said. "He felt it really rounded out his personality."

Hill had to choose between professional basketball and a waiting job in the New York office of Goldman, Sachs, where he had interned for the past two summers.

"The guys in New York have been very supportive, and they're extremely excited for me," Hill said. "I'm planning to play the one year, then evaluate it. It'll probably be a one or two-year thing, before I have to go back to the real world."

This imminent signing marks another chapter in a highlight-heavy career, which began at basketball powerhouse DeMatha High School and continued in the rebuilding of a competitive program at Harvard.

"Coach [Frank] Sullivan was extremely happy for me, and said it was well deserved," Hill said. "But he's warned me that it's a different world, with more pressure. I know everybody's eyes will be on me, to see that I'm playing up to the standard."

Hill will spend the summer training in the Boston area by playing in the Staples Beantown Pro-Am League, where he will join sophomore forward Dan Clemente.

Hill graduates with the school record for assists at 570, and is seventh all-time in scoring with 1,385 points. He was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 1995-96, and made the First Team this year.

Last season, Hill led the Crimson and was sixth in the Ivy League with 16 points per game, and led the league with 6.6 assists per game, almost one better than his nearest competitor, Dartmouth's Flinder Boyd.

Hill was the floor general for a senior class that set a Harvard mark for most wins in a four-year period, at 58.

In the season's most stunning moment, an 87-79 overtime upset of Ivy nemesis Princeton on Feb 20 at Lavietes Pavilion, Hill scored a game-high 27 points and dished four assists.

Hill also won the 1999 Chip Hilton award, given annually to the Division I player who "best demonstrates personal character on and off the court." Previous recipients of the prestigious prize include San Antonio's Tim Duncan, who bagged it after the 1996-97 season.