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Kyle Hines
Sport: Basketball
Born: September 2, 1986
Town: Sicklerville
Kyle Terrel Hines was born September 2, 1986 in Sicklerville. His father, Reggie Hines, was a high-school football star who was invited to a number of NFL camps but never saw regular-season action. Tall, athletic and powerfully built, Kyle played youth league basketball and enrolled at Camden Catholic High School in Cherry Hill. The Irish had a strong athletic program. Although Kyle made the varsity as a freshman, he didn’t see nearly the playing time he wanted. In 2001, a new public school opened up near Kyle’s home, Timber Creek Regional, and he transferred there. He quickly became the star of Gary Saunders’s Chargers, averaging more than 20 points a game as a junior power forward and earning a number of honors, including a First-Team All-South Jersey nod.
Kyle was even better as a senior, boosting his scoring to 23.5 points per game and using his 6’6” frame to become an excellent rebounder. Kyle’s younger brother, Tyler, ascended to the varsity and became its leading starter after he graduated.
Kyle was named Second-Team All-State but did not project as an impact player at the Division I level. Coach Fran McCaffrey, the coach at UNC-Greensboro, disagreed. He made Kyle the freshman centerpiece of a team that beat Southern Conference powerhouse Davidson in the SoCon Tournament and came within a win of an NCAA Tournament bid. Kyle averaged 13.6 points and 8.6 rebounds and was one of the nation’s most accurate shooters at 62.1%. Kyle built on his freshman campaign to become the Spartans’ leading scorer as a sophomore in 2005–06. He set school records with 578 points, averaging 19.3 per game, and racked up a huge number of blocks and steals as he developed into one of the conference’s best defensive players. He scored 20 points in a loss to Duke, at the time the nation’s top-ranked team. He was a First-Team All-Southern Conference pick at season’s end. He was runner-up in the SoCon Player of the Year voting in each of his first two seasons.
As a junior in 2006–07, Kyle was one of only a handful of D-I players who average more than 20 points and 9 rebounds a game. He had another good game against Duke—this time being double-teamed at Coach K’s direction—and was an easy pick for conference Player of the Year honors. He also earned a few All-America votes at the end of the year. As a senior, Kyle was an all-conference pick for the fourth year in a row and establish a career-high with 9.1 rebounds per game. Kyle was so valuable to the UNC-Greensboro program that the Spartans retired his number 42—while he was an active player!
Kyle recognized that his professional future lay outside the NBA, where he would have toiled at the end of the bench. He signed with Veroli in the city of Lazio and played two seasons for the team. Veroli won the championship both years and Kyle was named MVP of the 2009 Second Division Cup. From there, he joined Brose Baskets, a team in the German League, and was named 2011 Finals MVP. The next stop on Kyle basketball odyssey was Olympiacos of the Greek League. Playing power forward and center, he led the Red & Whites to back-to-back EuroLeague titles in 2012 and 2013.
In 2013–14, Kyle settled into what would become his basketball “home,” CSKA Moscow. In 2015–16, he averaged 10.9 points per game on 67.4% shooting as the team won the EuroLeague championship. In 2017–18 he was named the EuroLeague Defensive Player of the Year. Kyle and his brother—who also played professionally in Europe—opened a basketball in New Jersey.
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