This Olympic hopeful was the Sixers mascot, Hip Hop. Here’s how that role helped him train the next wave of local gymnasts.

Bill Roth waited behind a curtain at the CoreStates Center on the night of Jan. 15, 1998. He was dressed in a full-body rabbit costume with Oakley sunglasses on his face, a durag on his head, and a spiked collar around his neck.

His arms, shoulders, and chest were stuffed with padding. He wore black gloves, a black Sixers jersey, and black sneakers. All together, it was an imposing display. But beneath the faux fur, Roth was nervous.

Philadelphia was playing the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan was in attendance, and the 27-year-old was about to make his debut as Hip Hop, the 76ers’ new mascot. Even though Roth had been hired months earlier, he knew he didn’t have a long leash.

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The team’s previous in-game entertainment — an acrobatic group sponsored by Mountain Dew called the “Dew Crew” — lasted just one game before it was fired by team president Pat Croce.

Roth was determined not to suffer the same fate.

“It was literally a minute-and-a-half routine,” he said, “to find out what the next 12 to 13 years were going to look like.”

He passed his test and was rewarded with a full-time job that he had for over a decade. He performed 41 games a year as the Sixers’ eccentric, somewhat-controversial, muscle-bound rabbit. At first, it was just a fun way to pay the bills. But Roth ended up learning lessons that would serve him for the rest of his professional life.

For that initial performance, Roth decided to draw on his experience as a five-time national champion Temple gymnast. He took a couple of deep breaths, visualized himself on the court, and tried to focus.

When the curtain lifted, and “Motownphilly” by Boyz II Men began to play, Roth ran out with his assistant, Ron Perry, who was dressed in “the worst Bulls costume” he could find. He threw his friend onto the floor, picked up the basketball, catapulted off a mini trampoline, and did a flip dunk over his head.

The crowd went crazy. After the skit was over, the gymnast’s coworkers werewaiting with a bottle of champagne. They toasted the future. The Hip Hop era had officially begun.

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Roth, now 54, played the mascot from 1998 to 2011. During the day, he was a suburban dad from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who looked like everybody else. But at night, he’d turn into a rabble-rousing rabbit who captivated fans and NBA players alike (although his routine eventually wore thin).

It was the perfect job for an artistic gymnast with boundless energy. Before joining the Sixers, Roth competed for Temple from 1988 to 1993. He set a number of school records that still stand in the all-around, vault, and horizontal bar. Roth also won two world championships with the U.S. national team and competed in the Pan Am Games and the Olympic trials in the early 1990s.

Now, in his post-Sixers era, he is back in the gym. In 2015, Roth and his wife, Christina, opened CrossPoint Gymnastics in Chichester. They train children from 18 months to 18 years old, with the goal of teaching a challenging sport in an inclusive and safe environment.

The kind of environment he had with the Sixers.

“This is a sport where in order to succeed, you have to fail,” Roth said. “We’ve tried to create a place where kids feel cared for. They feel safe to make a mistake.

“When we were creating Hip Hop, there were a ton of mistakes. But I also had such a support staff there, that they were OK with it. That, in itself, is a gift.”

In the mid-1990s, the Sixers had an obvious brand problem. They drew only 11,934 fans per game. Local stores had trouble selling team merchandise. When their public relations staff would offer tickets to the PTA Penny Auction, a fundraiser for local schools, the PTA would politely decline.

“They’d say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Dave Coskey, the Sixers’ executive vice president from 1996 to 2004.

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Croce, the team’s longtime president and minority owner, known for his zany personality and boundary-pushing leadership, was determined to change that perception. He brought in the black jerseys in 1997. The Sixers added a house band during timeouts and held concerts after games. They came up with quirky giveaways and promotions, like a Dikembe Mutombo bobble-finger.

The idea was to entertain people from start to finish, and for the most part, Croce’s ideas hit. But he had some misses — including the Dew Crew.

The six-man group made its debut on Nov. 1, 1996, in the first regular-season game at the new CoreStates Center, now the Wells Fargo Center. They airballed a few dunks and were booed by 20,444 irritable fans.

Coskey approached Croce after the game, thinking the Crew could be salvaged. But Croce had made up his mind.

“No,” he told Coskey. “They’re done.”

Eager to avoid another mishap, the Sixers underwent a nationwide search for a new mascot to replace Big Shot, the mascot from the previous regime. They sought something that matched the identity of the team — hip, edgy, and, as Croce put it, “revolutionary.”

“I’m pretty sure I wanted a badass rabbit because I wanted speed,” Croce said. “I got [Allen] Iverson. So I wanted energy. I didn’t want some dinosaur. I wanted something that’s moving.”

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The team held a two-day tryout. In the first round, they sent applicants to the Deptford Mall in a Barney costume to see how they’d interact with strangers. In Round 2, applicants showed off their dunking skills, while wearing a gorilla suit, at the Sixers’ practice facility in Springfield, Delaware County.

Roth was the obvious choice. He not only had a gymnastics background, but he had worked for the Atlanta Hawks as their acrobatic mascot, Skyhawk, in 1996. In person, he was an even better fit. Like Croce and Coskey, the Temple graduate was completely committed to game presentation.

“That was what I always thought was Bill’s greatest attribute,” Coskey said. “You never had to worry about him being committed.”

Roth’s first assignment literally was to sketch out a character. The Sixers knew they wanted a rabbit, but they didn’t know exactly what it would look like.

So, he reached out to one of his former Temple teammates, who worked at Marvel Comics. They presented several options to Croce, who chose the swagger-laden look.

The gymnast spent months refining his costume and preparing skits, but he knew his future with the team was far from guaranteed.

“We’ve already told the rabbit,” Croce said to the Daily News in 1998. “Be great or be the Dew Crew.”

Luckily for the Sixers, Hip Hop was an early success. Because of Croce’s tactics — and the presence of Iverson — attendance was steadily increasing. Roth’s basketball moves became more involved (backward dunks, dunking over cars, dunking over motorcycles), and so did his skits.

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They often involved his family. Initially, it was just Roth’s wife, another Temple gymnastics product, who participated. One time, when his wife was holding their newborn son, Roth grabbed the baby out of her hands and gave him to a referee.

“This woman said to me, ‘How could you let him take your baby?’” Christina said. “I had to say to her, secretly, ‘That’s his baby, too.’ To show that I’m not a horrible person and he’s really a good guy.”

By the mid-2000s, the couple had three young children who were gymnasts, which gave Roth plenty of new characters to work with. Their eldest child, Madison, was offered a recurring role, “Lil’ Hip Hop,” and took to it instantly.

In 2009, they created a skit in which she would dunk over a miniature car, en route to a miniature hoop. Christina asked her husband what would happen if her daughter missed.

“I was like, ‘We’re all-in or nothing,’” Bill Roth said. “It’s either going in the hoop or [the boos are] raining down.”

(Madison made the dunk.)

That young children were involved in Roth’s routine was ironic, given what the mascot looked like. Some kids were scared of Hip Hop, which prompted the Sixers to make tweaks to his costume. Others found the mascot stale: a “gross, embarrassing, obvious attempt to appeal to 20-somethings,” as sportswriter John Gonzalez put it in one of his columns.

But to the Sixers, that was part of taking risks. Not everyone was going to be on board. And for Roth and his family, the role provided experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have.

As they spent more time at the arena, they got to know the staff and players. Roth became friendly with coach Larry Brown and shooting guard Aaron McKie, whom he’d known since his days at Temple.

Christina bonded with Iverson’s mother, Ann, who, like her son, became a fan of the mascot.

“There were multiple games where we would try dunks over the motorcycle, through pyro, and afterwards [Allen] would be like, ‘You one crazy dude,’” Roth said.

The job evolved as Hip Hop’s popularity grew. Roth became a team ambassador and appeared at birthday parties, museums, schools, and hospitals. They were long days — filled with sweat-soaked costumes — but there were perks, as well.

In 2005, when Roth was visiting the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he couldn’t find a spot to park. So he pulled onto a curb.

Three police officers walked over, presumably to tell him to move. But once they saw Hip Hop jump out of the front seat, their demeanor changed.

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“They were like, ‘Ayyyy, Hip Hop!’” Roth said. “We took a couple of pictures. They loved it. The assistant I had with me said, ‘Hey, we’re going to see this patient.’ And they said, ‘No worries, just leave the van there. We’ll watch it.’”

With each game and event, Roth got more comfortable, but he never stopped working on his craft. Throughout his first few years with the Sixers, he consulted as many mascots as he could, including former Phillie Phanatic Dave Raymond and current Phanatic Tom Burgoyne.

The gymnast constantly was thinking of new skits and reviewing his old ones. He studied tape and watched not just himself, but at the people around him — the fans, the staff, the players.

If they were locked in on Hip Hop, he knew he was doing something right. Croce did, too.

“Every once in a while, during a timeout, Billy would do some crazy [stuff], where he’d do a flip, grab a ball off someone’s head, and dunk it,” Croce said. “The players were watching him instead of Larry Brown. I would’ve come down there and slapped them. Listen to the coach!”

By 2011, a lot was different. The NBA was in a lockout, the ownership group had changed, and there was animosity toward the Sixers, who hadn’t posted a winning season since 2004-05.

Some of that ire was directed at Hip Hop. Fans wrote to the team asking for a new mascot. Roth remembers driving into work on Oct. 12 and listening to Angelo Cataldi suggest that the Sixers “sacrifice the rabbit.”

A few hours later, he was fired.

“It was definitely a sad day,” Roth said. “You’re growing up with people. My kids are growing up with their kids. It was a family.”

Nevertheless, by 2011, Roth was ready to move on. He underwent Achilles tendon surgery and knee surgery over his 14-year stint with the team. It was a physically and emotionally demanding job.

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He said he doesn’t miss performing, but he does miss the people. They taught him how to market himself and lead a team. He learned how to manage his time, how to interact with different personalities, and how to represent a company.

Most of all, Roth learned what it was to succeed — and fail — in a supportive community. Gymnastics can be cutthroat. The sport’s greatest athletes, like Simone Biles, have opened up about the scrutiny they’re under and how it has impacted their mental health. Gyms haven’t always been safe and inclusive spaces.

Roth wants to change that.

“I always talk to the kids about making mistakes,” Roth said. “I mention Hip Hop; I mention my own gymnastics career. I never made an Olympic team, right? So, how did I take my failures [and respond]?

“[The Sixers] were OK with me making mistakes, but they wanted me to learn from them. And I think that’s the whole thing. In here, we try to teach that message.”

Just who delivers that message — Roth or his alter ego — depends on the day.

“Sometimes he does things where I’m like, ‘Honey, that was Hip Hop,’” Christina said. “He still has those mannerisms.”