DETROIT (AP) - Former Michigan basketball star Jalen Rose says Grant Hill has agreed to help support the new charter school in Detroit bearing Rose’s name.
The Jalen Rose Leadership Academy is expected to open in September. Rose says Hill has promised to lend his support and that things are fine between them after Hill criticized Rose in March for comments he made in an ESPN documentary about Michigan’s famous Fab Five.
Hill, a former Duke standout, criticized Rose in the New York Times for saying the Blue Devils “only recruited black players that were ’Uncle Toms.’” Rose says he was only describing how he felt back when he was a teenager _ as opposed to now.
“Any time, for example, you have a critically acclaimed piece like the Fab Five documentary has been, you’re going to have 99 percent of the people that love it, but when you have the brutal honesty, you’re going to have that 1 percent on the other side of the coin, so to speak,” Rose said Saturday. “I definitely talked to Grant and reached out to Coach K, and again clarified that that was how I felt as a high school recruit.”
A Detroit native, Rose threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Detroit Tigers’ game Saturday against Kansas City. Afterward, he was eager to promote the new school, and he said Hill _ a former Detroit Piston _ has agreed to support the venture. Rose said Detroit Lions defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh has also reached out to him.
Rose, who spent 13 years in the NBA and is now an ESPN analyst, recently decided to sell his version of the “General Lee,” a 1969 Dodge Charger used in “The Dukes of Hazzard” television series. Proceeds will benefit the new school.
Rose said he got little use out of the car, except during the Woodward Dream Cruise, the Detroit area’s annual vintage car parade.
“You have a great vehicle like that, it’s a nostalgic vehicle … what can you really do with it to have a true impact? My riding up and down the Dream Cruise a couple of days a year means a lot to me _ that day. But then I’m going to park it for a year,” Rose said. “It’s going to a worthy cause.”
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