During his five seasons with the Santa Cruz Warriors, Casey Hill believes he spent an estimated three minutes in the visitor’s locker room at Kaiser Permanente Arena.
On Saturday, he’ll easily top that amount of time.
The former head coach of the Warriors will return to K.P. Arena for the first time as the opposition. Now the leader of the Agua Caliente Clippers of Ontario, Hill will play his former team in a Pacific division battle at 7 p.m.
Hill, who is expected to receive a warm welcome from the Warriors’ home fans, said the game will be an emotional return to a place he once called home.
He also said he and his team won’t be pulling any punches.
“Obviously I want to win,” said Hill in a phone interview on Thursday. “It’ll be a focus of ours, obviously. But I don’t want to put any undue pressure on our players. The most important thing is that we go in there and compete. As long as we do that, I’ll be happy with it.”
Hill spent one season as an assistant to Nate Bjorkgren and four more as the Warriors’ lead man before deciding to part ways with the franchise to search for a better opportunity of eventually making an NBA coaching staff.
In those four seasons with Hill at the helm, Santa Cruz made the playoffs three times and won the then D-League championship during the 2014-15 season in front of a sold-out crowd at K.P. Arena.
Winning the title was one of several fond memories Hill still holds near and dear from his time in Santa Cruz. Outlasting Oklahoma City in a wild back-and-forth Game 1 during last year’s playoffs, a firework snafu in the franchise’s first-ever playoff game and Seth Curry’s 44-point outburst in the playoffs were among his favorites.
“I can go down the line. I have so many amazing memories,” Hill said. “Even practices and team events and community events in there that I remember that were just really special.”
Hill joined the Golden State organization in 2011 as an assistant under Bjorkgren for the team’s lower-level affiliate, the Dakota Wizards, in Bismarck, North Dakota.
A year later, Golden State moved the team to Santa Cruz and rebranded the franchise.
Hill said he remembers having to build up trust with the Santa Cruz community over the first few months following the move.
He said parts of the process have been the same with the Agua Caliente Clippers, a G League affiliate of the Los Angeles Clippers in their first year as a franchise. Most of the headaches, however, have been logistical.
“There’s certain things that I’ve brought with me here from my experience helping Santa Cruz start off, moving from Bismarck,” Hill said. “The logistical part of this has been great. The experience of that has been a lot of fun. Working with a new staff, a completely new coaching staff of the Clippers, and putting together a new staff and figuring out what makes people tick…It feels good when you’re able to put a plan together that executes well.”
Santa Cruz opened up its season in Ontario against Hill and the Agua Caliente Clippers. The Warriors, led by new head coach Aaron Miles, won by 33 points on a night in which they shot 58 percent from the field and 63 percent from deep.
Hill said Santa Cruz’s roster is impressive but added that he does not expect the same fireworks from opening night on Saturday.
He does, however, expect the night to be an interesting one walking into K.P. Arena and heading into the visiting locker room.
“It’ll definitely be strange walking in there,” Hill said. “But I’ve been in the professional basketball industry for a very long time, having been with my father in his career. I learned pretty early on to not be surprised by anything. So as awkward and as strange as it will feel for me being in the visitor’s locker room in K.P.A., it’s certainly something I can’t be surprised by.”
