The New King of the Hills : College basketball: Grant Hill, the son of former NFL star Calvin Hill, is making a name for himself at Duke.

Calvin Hill was in a Reston, Va., supermarket the other day when he noticed some kids peeking at him from around an aisle, and whispering to themselves. Calvin smiled to himself and thought: Maybe they recognize me from my Redskin days -- or, more flatteringly, maybe they think I’m a current Redskin.

He continued shopping and eventually got to the checkout, where he noticed them again. Shyly, they approached him, and this time he thought: They probably have my old card, and they want me to sign it.

“Excuse me,” one of them said.

And Calvin Hill turned to hear. ...

“Excuse me, aren’t you Grant Hill’s father?”

Duke’s undefeated and No. 1-rated basketball team visited Cole Field House this week, bringing a familiar cast. Over the past half-dozen seasons Duke has established itself as the pre-eminent college basketball program in the country, and through the ever-expanding TV coverage of college basketball we’ve grown so accustomed to Duke that we should forgive ourselves if, while watching the Blue Devils, we tend to think of them warmly as basketball’s version of the Partridge Family.

There’s Mike Krzyzewski, the solid, virtuous coach; Christian Laettner, the matinee-idol forward; Bobby Hurley, the reckless, impetuous point guard; Grant Hill, the liquid swingman, so stylish and graceful he should play in a tuxedo.

This is a story about fathers and sons, and what it’s like to watch your boy become a man.

The name Calvin Hill should be familiar. He was an all-American at Yale, a Pro Bowl running back in the NFL, a member of the Super Bowl Dallas Cowboys, and later a Washington Redskin. A thoughtful man. A great star. And now, the father of, potentially, an even greater star -- because by the time he’s a senior, Grant Hill may well be the best college basketball player in the country.

Except for rare examples, such as Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey Jr., the sons of great athletes normally fall far short of their fathers’ accomplishments. I asked if Calvin was surprised that his son -- a child of privilege, after all -- had become a great athlete.

“A little, I suppose,” he said. “I always wanted a son. I looked forward to throwing a ball with my son, like all fathers. But I never thought in terms of having a son who’d be a great athlete. Usually your son gets to be 16 or 17, and he has an identity crisis because he realizes he’ll never be as good as Dad. So you tell him it’s okay, and you get through it together. But here I have this great athlete. I read stories about Grant, and in them it’ll say, ‘ ... and then Hill did this.’ And I say, wait a second! I’m ‘Hill!’ How did my son get to be ‘Hill’?”

At 19, Grant is 6 feet 8, four inches taller than his father, a significant advantage in a game of garage-door hoops.

“The last time I challenged Grant to a game was when he’d come home from a 13-and-under tournament. His team had won, so I said, ‘You think you’re pretty good, huh? You think you can beat your old man?’ Once he got the ball I couldn’t touch him. It’s not supposed to happen at 16, maybe not even at 19. He did it at 13! It was the first time I had a sense of my own mortality. ... When he was a senior in high school, we were wrestling. He pinned me. I actually couldn’t get up. I’m 6-4. I weigh over 200 pounds. And I’m down there thinking, ‘My God, my son’s stronger than I am.’ ”

Ah, the old lion-young lion thing. Sooner or later all fathers must dance to it. Calvin recalled a touch football game a while back. He was covering Grant, giving him the bump-and-run, and Grant made an inside move and got free. Calvin was running with him as the pass was thrown. Grant leaped for it, caught it smoothly, ran two more strides and spiked the ball. “I was steamed that he spiked on me,” Calvin said, alluding to every dad’s nightmare -- that your kid will not only outdo you, but then he’ll rub it in. “I said to Grant, ‘Let’s do it again.’ He gives me an outside move, and he’s running alongside a row of hedges. For a brief moment I thought of shoving him into the hedges.” That sound you hear is Calvin laughing. “I don’t compete with Grant anymore. It used to be to help his confidence. Now, it’s for mine.”

It’s best for all concerned that Grant went into basketball. “I was very sensitive about football,” Calvin said. “Grant wanted to play it early, and I told him not to start with organized football until ninth grade -- the same time that I started. I hoped if he chose football, it would be because he wanted to, not because he felt he had to do it for me. I’m happy his sport is basketball. I didn’t want him to be compared to me.”

Though Calvin was a fine high-school basketball player, he was much better in baseball and football and says, curiously, that he knows relatively little about basketball even now. “I try to sit near Mr. Laettner or Mr. Hurley at games, so they can explain it to me.” Calvin knows enough, however, to know that Grant is special. “I’m his father, and I think like a father,” Calvin said, beginning a father’s typical anxiety. “Duke doesn’t play with mouthguards; Coach K likes the players to be able to communicate on the floor. I once asked Grant about that. I said, ‘Grant, can’t you play with a mouthguard? There’s $6,000 worth of orthodontic work I’m worried about.’ I mean, to me, Grant is still this little kid I used to toss in the air. But then I see him on TV, and he’ll do things that shock me. I’ll see him dunk sometimes and ask myself, ‘Is that Grant?’ ”

Leaning back in his seat, Calvin half-closed his eyes, like he was looking at something he could barely see. “You know, when I was a kid, my father used to love to come watch me play. Not just games -- he’d come and watch practices and scrimmages. I never understood it then. But I do now. I’m that way with Grant. I love watching him and seeing him improve. I get a bigger kick out of watching Grant succeed than I ever did for myself.” And humbled by his great fortune as a father, Calvin Hill said: “I played on a Super Bowl winner in Dallas. After all those years of living with the tag, ‘next year’s champs,’ winning the Super Bowl was a tremendous high. But it wasn’t as great as coming out of the Hoosier Dome after Duke won the Final Four.

“I walked out into the night, looked up at the stars and said, ‘God, I’ve already had my time, so I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this. But thank you.’ ”