George Hill’s post-NBA life looks very different from the one he lived during 15 seasons in the league.
The former San Antonio Spurs guard owns Scenic Hills Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, a massive property outside San Antonio that has grown into a private wildlife sanctuary containing more than 1,000 animals. The ranch includes species such as zebras, kangaroos, wildebeests, impalas, elk, ostriches, several types of antelope and red stags.
Hill originally purchased roughly 850 acres in 2017. Today, the ranch is covering around 900 acres after additional land was added. The scale is enormous: Hill joked that downtown Indianapolis could fit inside only a portion of the property, while the ranch actually is nearly two-and-a-half times the size of the city’s downtown area.
The idea, however, goes back much further than his NBA career.
Hill grew up around horses in Indianapolis after his father bought two pintos when he was young. He has spoken about riding one of them through his neighborhood and even taking the horse to local parks while he played basketball. Years later, after establishing himself financially in the NBA, that early connection to animals helped inspire the ranch he eventually built in Texas.
Scenic Hills Ranch is not simply a collection of exotic animals. Hill has said he views the property as something permanent for his family and has spoken openly about creating generational wealth rather than leaving his children only memories of his basketball career.
“I’m going to own a ranch and I will put it into my kids’ trust fund, and it’s going to be a family ranch forever,” Hill told Andscape in 2024.
Maintaining a property of that scale is its own full-time operation. More than 10 employees regularly work on the ranch, monitoring its extensive fencing and caring for the animals. Hill has also built a home, horse facilities and a regulation-size basketball court on the property.
The setting is particularly fitting considering Hill’s connection to San Antonio. The Spurs selected him with the 26th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, and he spent his first three NBA seasons there before being traded to Indiana in the 2011 draft-night deal that ultimately brought Kawhi Leonard to San Antonio.
Basketball took Hill through cities across the NBA. The Texas Hill Country, however, became the place where he chose to put down roots.
