Roy Hibbert Discussion 2015-16: No Buyout

So who else are we interested in?

 

We need a backup PG really bad if we're starting Kobe at SF. If Clarkson goes to the bench we need a starting SF.

 

Wonder who we can get with the 4 mil we have left

 

Someone had to pee in our cornflakes.

 

Well betting against himself, but hopefully betting he will be great and get himself a massive contract.

 

Was meant to quote John, need to get the hang of the new functions

 

I like this tidbit about Hibbert from an article several years old .... If he truly has an obsessive work ethic, Kobe will be fine with him.

It’s good to be Roy Hibbert. A true center in a post-center league, the sturdy and fundamentally sound Hibbert spent most nights this season matched up against moonlighting power forwards and big but useless stiffs. In averaging 13 points, nine rebounds, and two blocks per game, Hibbert earned his first All-Star appearance and became (arguably) the best player on a team with the fifth-best record in the NBA. And when he becomes a restricted free agent this summer, Hibbert will likely command a high price not only for his skill set’s quality, but for its scarcity.

“He doesn’t get near enough credit for the player he is,” an opposing scout told me at the Milwaukee game. “He’s clearly one of the most skilled centers in the league.” Hibbert’s success is partly the result of being in the right league at the right time, but it’s also the result of a late-developing but now-obsessive work ethic, which he’s channeled toward improving his game and tinkering with his body to maximize his lone natural gift: height.

About two hours before that game against the Bucks, Hibbert walked onto the floor in a near-empty Bankers Life Fieldhouse and began the game-day routine required to keep a 7-foot-2 body running. A young and athletic team, the Pacers need less of the daily body maintenance you’ll find among older squads, whose players have creakier joints. But while teammates hoisted jumpers and joked during impromptu games of one-on-one, Hibbert wandered out to half court alone.

He began by walking across the floor with varied pace and gait. He then moved on to leg lunges and toe touches and other stretches that are simple to most but, just a few years ago, would have been nearly impossible for Hibbert. Ten minutes passed before he finally picked up a basketball. He moved to the post and started with hook shots — five from the left block, five from the right block, and five from the middle — before assistant coach Brian Shaw stepped in to defend, fouling Hibbert on every touch with no fear of repercussions.

The routine was rote and methodical, designed to maintain Hibbert’s greatest gift, his large body, while fine-tuning skills that he long struggled to develop. Hibbert has earned his place among the league’s best bigs, but he’s only done so by overcoming an almost complete lack of natural athleticism and strength. Quite simply, Hibbert is good because he is tall — and because, unlike so many other 7-foot-plus “projects” who populate D-League rosters and NBA benches, Hibbert decided to do whatever it took to become something more than a stiff who never developed.

I believe this guy is still in there. I hope he seeks out Cap to work with him. I can't wait to hear Hibbert's reaction to the trade! He will probably be pretty stoked!!

 

Well what do you know, it did happen. It's better than nothing. Call Cap and Metta's sports psychologist ASAP.

 

I dont blame him

He fell out of favor in indiana and his minutes went down.

If i had to pick between being a FA or opting for 16 mil after a down year i take the 16mil every single time

 

If I was on the team I would bet $50,000 he can't average more than 9 rebounds.

 

At least we have our rim protector i approve of this move

We just need him to play d he can get his points off put backs and im pretty sure russ can throw a few lobs his way

 

Hopefully our coaches can fix that

Im sure its just a matter of choosing your spots to be in better position to rebound.

 

I also love this other part of the article about Hibbert ... sorry for the length:

Cut to 2004, Hibbert’s first year at Georgetown. In an early fall workout, Hibbert lay prostrate in the weight room, watched by strength coach Mike Hill. He’d hit the ground to bang out a few push-ups, but a problem soon became clear: Hibbert couldn’t do one. So while women’s soccer and lacrosse players looked on, Hill straddled the freshman big man, reached down, and grabbed him by the sides, pulling him up and pushing him down while Hibbert struggled to pitch in. “It was humiliating,” Hibbert says. “All these girls are watching — they can do push-ups but I can’t.” Not only could Hibbert not do a push-up, he couldn’t bend his knees enough to do a single squat, even without holding weights.

That’s not all. “He couldn’t run,” says Boston C Bags forward Jeff Green, who was part of the same Georgetown recruiting class as Hibbert.“He was pigeon-toed, and he had these size 18 shoes, so he was just tripping over himself trying to get up and down the court.” (Says Hill: “It was more of a waddle than a run.”) But in the half court, Green says, “he was a load.” Big, with good defensive timing and a soft offensive touch, Hibbert was capable of scoring when he got the ball down low. But this was the Big East, a league stacked with elite athletes. As long as Hibbert was incapable of passing a middle school fitness test, he wouldn’t have an impact.

Hibbert played about 16 minutes per game as a freshman, and coach John Thompson III let him know that without significant improvement, he’d end up stuck on the bench. “They brought a recruit in on a visit — another big guy,” Hibbert says. “We played in an open gym, and he just kicked my a** all the way up and down the court. I couldn’t do anything against him, and I knew he was coming to take my spot.”

Big men are often stereotyped as guys who play basketball more out of obligation than a genuine love for the sport. Allen Iverson played because he was a ruthless, maniacal competitor, the thinking goes, while Shawn Bradley played because it would have been a waste if he hadn’t. Hibbert has always enjoyed the sport, he says, but his decision to obsess over his own development was largely inspired by wounded pride. “At first I thought he was another guy who played because he was big and he wanted to go to school and it was an easy thing for him to do,” says Green. “But over time he showed that he was passionate about it and wanted to be good at it. For him, it was always about wanting to prove people wrong.”

“That was a challenge to my pride,” Hibbert says of Thompson’s threats to bury him on the bench. “I knew that what I’d been doing wasn’t enough.” So the summer between his freshman and sophomore years, Hibbert started working to transform his body and expand his skill set.

How important is height?

Obviously, in basketball, it matters a great deal. But how significant is height by itself, when not paired with girth (think Shaq) or athleticism (Dwight Howard) or agility and vision (Dirk Nowitzki)? What if you’re just tall — and that’s it?

Now, it would be disingenuous to suggest that when Hibbert set out to improve his game, he was bereft of natural talent. He has always had good depth perception and dexterous fingers, both of which give him a soft touch around the basket. He’s also naturally intelligent, allowing him to digest and apply coaches’ lessons more quickly than others. And even the part of his personality that caused him to respond to criticism with hard work — the passion that lay dormant for so long — is at least partly due to genetics.

But in Hibbert, height is something of an isolated variable, untethered from the other talents that usually propel a player to the NBA, such as leaping ability, quickness, and natural strength. When he arrived at Georgetown, Hibbert was — by any measuring stick — a below-average athlete. But because the advantage of height is so great and players of Hibbert’s size are so rare, he didn’t need elite athleticism to excel.

Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control, Sports Illustratedestimated that there are fewer than 70 7-footers between the ages of 20 and 40 in the United States. Seventy 7-footers; 30 starting NBA centers. If you’re Nate Robinson’s height, you need to be an exceptional athlete to make the league. If you’re Hibbert’s, you just have to be pretty good. “You see a lot of 6-9 and 6-10 centers around the league, but that’s not because coaches want to move toward smaller and quicker guys,” the Eastern Conference scout said during the Bucks game. “There just aren’t many quality guys with legit center size right now.”

So during the offseason between Hibbert’s freshman and sophomore years, he met Hill in the weight room every day. First, they worked on speed and agility, using jump ropes, Hula-Hoops, and tennis balls. Then they moved on to strength training, until Hibbert could do one push-up, and then 10 and then 20 and then more. “It took some time,” Hill says, “but once he realized, ‘Holy s***! I really can be good at this stuff,’ then it just clicked.” Hibbert started peppering Hill with questions — How’s my form? What does my body fat look like? What else can I do to target this muscle? — until, Hill says, “It got to the point where it felt like he was challenging me as much or more than I was challenging him.”

Hibbert made a leap that offseason, and then continued with steady improvement in the years that followed, and by the time he graduated, Hibbert was a two-time All–Big East player and a focal point on a Final Four team. Hibbert had built a skill set that highlighted his strengths and masked his deficiencies. In doing so, he became a coveted NBA prospect. And although he still faced questions about his athleticism and agility, Hibbert believed, according to the Washington Times, that he could eventually become a “serviceable starting center.”

Not a lofty goal, but at the time, it seemed a fair challenge.

Since entering the league, Hibbert has continued fine-tuning, looking for new ways to maximize his natural gifts by working on the physical (he does mixed martial arts to improve agility), the mental (he performs relaxation exercises to keep himself from “spazzing out” on the court), and the technical (he worked this past offseason on transitioning from a sprint to a defensive stance more quickly) aspects of his game.

“He’s always asking, ‘How can I do this better?'” says teammate David West. Hibbert pays Justin Zormelo, a private scout, to send him edited film and detailed reports on himself and the center he’s matched up against before every game. “The guys who work for the team are great, but they have to focus on the whole team,” Hibbert says. “It’s good to get something more personal.”

After inconsistent play under previous coach Jim O’Brien, for whom Hibbert lost weight in an attempt to play more up-tempo, he has thrived under first-year coach Frank Vogel. Hibbert gained weight and strength in the offseason, and Vogel designs his offensive and defensive sets to keep Hibbert near the basket. And even though Hibbert has lamented his lack of perimeter development, West says, “Roy embraces his size. Too many big guys want to be guards. He knows who he is.”

I'm pretty stoked about this pick-up if you couldn't tell!

 

Hit "Reply"

 

Sweet. Nice get! Wow, and the larger 2nd part of it down lower. Roy should be estatic about now. Not inconceivable that he could have his best basketball ahead of him with the right support around him.

 

@Big Mamma Jamma thanks for those reads, they were excellent!!

 

IMO, way better than nothing. This guy is 28 and physically in his prime. Made the All Star game a few years ago. Acknowledged to be true big man center and defensive force against most smaller guys masquerading as centers. Has completely taken away my fears about getting killed by true big men. Bynum joined his team and then guys went down, never had a great guard and sounds like a lot of blame fell on him. Messed him up in the head quite a bit. Not everyone has alpha dog confidence. That article above says how hard he had to work considering he wasn't naturally gifted, just BIG. A brand new start here with the Lakers will do wonders for his confidence. That happens, we have ourselves a true big man we haven't had since Pau went soft and Bynum got his injuries. Cap goes up next year and we have the money to keep him.