MEDINA, Texas – On a warm October day, NBA free agent guard George Hill stood proud and at peace while overlooking 900 acres of land with enough exotic animals to make a zoo jealous.
Hill’s “Scenic Hills Ranch” is actually almost 2½ times the size of downtown Indianapolis where the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend is taking place. The 15-year NBA veteran’s riches helped him purchase this vast land about 45 minutes from where he once played with the Spurs in San Antonio. On the property, there are more than 1,000 different animals including impalas, zebras, elk, stags, antelope, sables, deer, kangaroos, oryx, ostrich, horses, red lechwes and more.
“You hear any cars?” Hill asked Andscape on Oct. 25. “You don’t hear any cars. You don’t hear anyone talking. You can’t hear the day-to-day life of living like in the inner city. You hear nothing but air, animals and birds. The way this wind is blowing, it blows like this every day. When you’re up here on top of the hill. If you go down the valley, it gets hot. Yeah, but up here, the wind blows like this constantly. So just relaxing. When you are having a bad day, you just come up here and it’s a different kind of music. Different…
“All of downtown Indianapolis would fit in half of this. That is how big this is compared to Indianapolis downtown.”
In small-town Medina, Texas, with about 500 residents, Scenic Hills Ranch is where Hill can always take a deep breath with clean air in “normal life.” It is a much different universe than the predominately Black Brightwood neighborhood in Indianapolis that Hill grew up in. Seeing death, including family and friends, and criminal activity was the norm for Hill as a youth. Today, the once-affordable Brightwood is being gentrified with pricier new homes and apartments while longtime, low-income Black residents are being priced out.
“Where I come from there’s gang violence, drug dealers, gangs,” Hill said. “When I finally got out here to the ranch, it was more about peace and quality of life. Breathing fresh air, not — quote unquote — looking over your shoulder. Just enjoying the fruits of your labor if you’re blessed with a life like this.
“This has been like my safe haven. This is the place I come to if I’m having a bad day or if I’m not feeling a certain way or things are bothering [me]. I come out here and I just sit here and I can spend hours here. And once I leave here, it’s like it’s left in there. I don’t worry about it as much.”
Morry Gash/AP Photo
Success in the game of basketball in Indianapolis started Hill’s unique path to his beloved ranch.
In Indianapolis, Hill became a Broad Ripple High School star who chose to go to college down the street at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in hopes of motivating local kids to get a higher education and to be close to family. The Spurs selected the 2008 Summit Conference Player of the Year with the 26th overall pick in the 2008 NBA draft. The 6-foot-4 guard has averaged 10.4 points, 3.1 assists and 3.0 rebounds for the Spurs, Indiana Pacers (twice), Utah Jazz, Sacramento Kings, Cleveland Cavaliers, Milwaukee Bucks (twice), Oklahoma City Thunder and Philadelphia 76ers.
Hill last played in the NBA with the Bucks and the Pacers last season. At the start of the 2023-24 season, Hill was not on an NBA roster for the first time since departing IUPUI. With the trade deadline passed, there is perhaps hope for Hill as NBA teams with open roster spots are now signing veteran free agents.
“I just had a baby boy, so it’s good being here,” Hill said. “But at the same time, you miss basketball and going to camp every year. So, to not finally do it this year, it’s a big crack on the head. But I’m going to just keep control of what I can control. Stay positive and have fun. You know this journey. There are opportunities to get back there. If it doesn’t, I’m OK with myself. I never beat myself up…
“I don’t think I’m ever going to stop working out. I hope to get back in, God willing. And I’ll be ready when opportunity comes for sure.”
Perhaps the biggest play of Hill’s NBA career was leading the Bucks and eventually the remaining teams in “The Bubble” to boycott and stop playing momentarily in the 2020 postseason in the name of social justice.
In the NBA bubble during the coronavirus pandemic, Hill decided to sit the morning of a Milwaukee Bucks playoff game against the Orlando Magic on Aug. 26, 2020, in Orlando, Florida. He was upset over continued racial injustice to his fellow African Americans, including the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Before the tip-off of the late afternoon contest, the rest of the Bucks decided to follow Hill’s lead.
The rest of the NBA teams eventually followed the Bucks’ lead that same day. Three days of NBA playoff games were postponed and players actually considered departing before voting to continue to play. To coerce players to return to the court, the NBA agreed to help players get voting poll stations in arenas and get more involved with Black-owned business, among other concessions. Similar protests and game postponements followed in Major League Baseball, the WNBA and Major League Soccer.
“It was a great, great feeling at the time, to see other people hop on board and stand for something throughout the whole league — throughout the whole world — in all sports, to stop for a second to realize,” Hill said. “And it felt like us, as athletes, we finally had our voice to go back from years and years and years of the just ‘shut up and dribble stuff.’
“We finally had our own voice and we finally stood for something. My thing is like, was everybody in it for the right reason?”
Darron Cummings/AP Photo
George Hill
As life-changing as making it to the NBA was for Hill, so was meeting longtime Spurs fans and season-ticket holders Will and Gloria Drash. The couple has had as much influence or perhaps more on Hill as Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich.
The Drashes are popular in San Antonio as they often seen talking to Spurs players and staff members at games. They dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus during Spurs charity events during the Christmas season. The renowned philanthropists once swam with beluga whales at SeaWorld with former Spurs star Tim Duncan and attend numerous road games, according to Pounding The Rock. The owners of Eagle Drilling Company also grew close to Hill, building a family-type bond with him, his wife, Samantha, and their children.
“After George gets finished practicing [in pregame], he comes up to us right here on the sidelines. We come here early each time, before 65-62 minutes [before tipoff]. When he gets through practicing, he comes by and hugs her before the game,” Will Drash told Pounding The Rock in 2011.
The long-bearded Drash, a Louisiana-bred sportsman, taught Hill how to shoot and break down a rifle, hunt wildlife and even make deer jerky on ranches in Texas Hill Country. Since then, Hill has hunted in Africa, Mexico and all over Texas. The heads of a hippopotamus, giraffe, bear and several other prized game Hill has hunted are now hanging in his garage of his home on the ranch.
Drash, who died at age 74 with his wife by his side on Jan. 19, 2021, also played the biggest role in convincing Hill to buy the land for a ranch.
“Mr. Drash showed me what it was to really live,” Hill said. “And ever since then, I was like, ‘Man, if I ever make enough money and [I am] fortunate enough, I want to own my own ranch, put in a trust and pass down to my kids to start a generational wealth type of thing. They always say most African American kids, when their parents or their grandparents die, they’re left with debt and not with equity.
“I don’t want to leave my kids in debt. I want to leave my kids with something that’s going to start generational [wealth]. Start them off better, and to a better career path. So, I’m going to own a ranch and I will put into my kids trust fund and it’s going to be a family ranch forever. So that’s how this came about. That’s how the whole ranch started.”
Hill said he scouted about 15 different locations in Hill Country before finding his 900-acre property for purchase. He received his wish of buying land that was “plain, raw and bare” with no houses or any other buildings on it.
After creating Scenic Hills Ranch here in 2017, he started searching online to buy exotic wildlife, to the surprise of his teammates, and also built a two-story house and horse stable.
“I don’t want cows because every day where I go in and smell cows, it smells like poop,” Hill said. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to go with wildlife.’ So that’s when I started to look into like, ‘Can I buy like, zebras? Can I buy like kangaroos? Can I buy like, stuff like that?’
“And they’re like, ‘Yeah.’ I’m like, ’Well, that’s why I want to turn my ranch into like a wildlife sanctuary.’ And that’s how Scenic Hills Ranch came about.”
Marc J. Spears/Andscape
George Hill
At the end of a dirt road, there is a tall and wide Jurassic Park-like door at the entrance of Hill’s property. If you get access through the giant gate, you can take a short drive to Hill’s modern home which includes a deck overlooking a nearby pond.
On the first floor, there’s a mammoth garage with the animal heads hanging on the wall, a diverse array of vintage luxury cars and some everyday vehicles that are, for the most part, collecting dust.
“I don’t even think we can explain where we are,” Hill said. “We’re in the Hill Country somewhere in Texas, which is the coincidence; it is called Hill Country and my last name is Hill. That’s why we name the Scenic Hills Ranch.”
Being an NBA player, businessman and father has kept Hill from being around the ranch on a daily basis. To keep Scenic Hills Ranch in order, he has more than 10 employees there on a regular basis, led by Miguel Castaneda. Castaneda says that he would text Hill weekly with updates on the ranch and the animals when he was playing for the Pacers last season. Every two weeks, Castaneda and his crew walk around the fence of the entire 900 acres to repair damage caused primarily by wild boars, to keep from losing animals and to prevent hungry predators from coming in.
Hill says his ranch has over 1,000 animals bought primarily from two different breeders in Texas. One female African sable cost $70,000. But there are hundreds of acres to hide in so it’s hard to see most of the animals that get scared from any automobile sound or human scent detected from afar.
“The animals don’t want you to see them. They won’t come out. Animals can be sitting in the trees right now and we would never know,” Hill said. “You scare one out because you either rode right past it, it smelled you a certain way or they feel threatened. So, they get up and run. Like the zebra probably wouldn’t have got up unless he probably just smelled us. Or he heard things and was like, ‘Okay, I’m moving.”
One place where animals are always excited to be seen is in the horse stable, which brings pride and joy to Hill and Cardenas. Sadly, Hill said he once lost seven horses, which cost about $50,000 each, due to an obscure brain disease last year. Cardenas spends the most time with the horses and makes sure they are fed. The military veteran got emotional inside the horse stable after revealing that he was “lost” before being hired by Hill.
“Every chance I get, I thank George,” Castaneda said. “’Thank you for letting me work. Words cannot express how much I love my job and I love you more for letting me be here because I can still be with my kids a little bit.’ That was the hardest part of being in the military: being gone from my family for months and months; [then going from] only seeing my kids once a year to where, if something is going on, I can go be with my kids and I still [can] come to work.
“So, it means everything to me what he’s done for me. You can see I get a little emotional because I’m really, really happy. Most veterans, they want to find their happy place. And it’s hard for a lot of veterans to find that. And me being here, it’s awesome. I love it.”
The Hill family has another home closer to San Antonio and stays at the home on the ranch on select weekends days and during the summer. Hill’s oldest son, Zayden, loves to ride the horses, drive the four wheelers and simply just be a kid. Boston Celtics guard Jrue Holiday and his family once took a vacation with the Hills in the home.
An NBA regulation basketball court is located a short walk behind the home, fully enclosed with a fence to keep the wildlife out. On the floor are the words, “George’s Jungle,” and two benches on the sideline just in case a game breaks out. It’s a popular place for basketball, volleyball and pickleball, especially during his annual Fourth of July party. Holiday, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks even took some shots on the court during a visit when Hill was playing for the franchise.
“Giannis, Jrue, the Bucks team came out here,” Hill said. “I brought the whole Bucks team out here one day and I had a bunch of food trucks come out. Everybody got to eat and go tour everything for like 3 hours. But other than that, all my friends come out here. We do a big party on 4th of July and we have probably 200 people out here and I have like six or seven food trucks and it’s free drinks, free food.
“So, I call this court ‘George’s Jungle’ since it’s an outdoor court. It is perfect. You’re in the woods. What better name than ‘George’s Jungle?’ It’s necessarily because it’s like a jungle around you. You can be playing basketball and the zebras, wildebeest and elk can walk up next to you. It’s fun. It just gives a different aspect of playing outside.”
Being around NBA All-Star Weekend in his hometown around current and former players will likely cause Hill to miss being away from basketball even more. There will certainly be some reminiscing during the invitation only “All-Starry Night with George Hill” at THE LUME Indianapolis this Saturday where art from Van Gogh is currently being featured. But once NBA All-Star Weekend is over in his hometown, his ranch with his beloved animals, the post card view and the cooling breeze on a humid day will always be waiting to offer a comfort whether he ends up being back in the NBA or not.
“You hear birds in air. What better way to do that? It is like your own retreat yourself. The thing I’m missing is, I guess, the ocean breeze. I guess ocean waves, smack gets to the rocks, waves in there. But that is the only thing you miss. But if we talk about peaceful, the way of life, what better way to refresh?” Hill said.
