Roy Hibbert Discussion 2015-16: No Buyout

Be forewarned: Now that I watched that highlight and heard that announcer say, "Smothered chicken", I will be writing that after his blocks in the gameday chat.

1st point - I think his FG% is going to rise by 5-7% just based on his ability/knowledge to duck in and move when his teammate drives. DAR/JC and especially Kobe are going to hook him up big time.

2nd point - I don't know if his falling is due to his equilibrium not catching up with his height or a defense mechanism of thinking he's going to get hurt. Either way if he's in the air for a long enough period of time, he's going down, which is pretty funny. But I'll take it because compared to Pau, who use to fall down randomly with no one around him on defense, Hibbert falls after smothering some chicken.

 

I'm just happy we actually have a defensive center, desperately needed someone like this.

 

Indiana can have Nick "Swaggy P" Young.

 

This thread from a Pacers forum is pure gold. They're discussing which trash they'd prefer to get back from the Hibbert trade: Swaggy, Kelly or Sacre

http://www.pacersdigest.com/showthread.php?106982-Hibbert-deal-in-the-works-with-Lakers

 

http://grantland.com/features/how-indiana-pacers-all-star-center-roy-hibbert-avoided-becoming-stiff/

Good read from May 2012

Couple interesting nuggets:
-He has his own scout to breakdown game tape for him...that's a good way to get on Kobe's good side. He should probably bring that up during their first meeting as teammates.
-he couldn't do a single pushup freshman year in college. That explains some of the awful form in the old workout video.

 

Optimistic read pertaining to his poor rebounding numbers

http://hardwoodparoxysm.com/2014/08...er-indiana-pacers-roy-hibbert-rebounding-nba/

 

I think he's alluding to Myles Turner, who I heard looked very good in Summer League so far.

 

Wow I'm feeling MUCH better about Hibbert after reading some posts from pacers digest...seems like Hibbert got caught in a Pau Gasol-like situation where the team no longer believed in him and didn't value him..but he never "quit" on the team, and he always came into camp in shape...which I love.

Seems like Indy fans want no part of swaggy P (I don't blame them), and they're very open to taking sacre and kelly (please take them).

Overall, I'm feeling better and better about Hibbert. He CAN have a bounce back year similar to Pau in Chicago. A new environment can do that for a player...

 

i'll go out on a limb and say that if hibbert has a pau-like bounceback year we make the playoffs

quote me on that and feel free to bump the thread if and when it happens

im that positive

 

I've been a Hibbert defender from quite some time. Two years ago, when the Lakers were really bad and the Pacers good, they were pretty much my favorite team to watch, and even the year before that I was enjoying them a lot. You could say I've been rooting for them in the East for some time. And I always remember how people used to say Hibbert didn't step up or something because he didn't score that much. That he's a talented guy who's not maximizing his talent, while I always said that it's just the other way round. He's not that talented, but he's maximizing what he actually has (even if he did had some awful games in the 2014 Playoffs). You can't expect him to do what he did to Miami every night, that's just not him.

This article is recent (and by recent, I mean post-trade), comes from a Pacers source (Jared Wade from 8points9seconds):

Go look up “Roy Hibbert” on Twitter.

I’ll wait a moment.



That’s what you’ll roughly find. No need to add in “trash” or “sucks,” these are the standard responses people have in response to Roy Hibbert. In fact almost every time we have posted anything on Roy Hibbert since the tail end of the 2013-14 season, there was at least one “trade ’em” comment. Obviously when Roy is at his worst it is easy to say this and at least in this moment his critics are right.

But has he actually gotten any worse? I don’t think he did.

I think perception or even just foolish delusion created expectations for Roy Hibbert that he was never going meet.



Since emerging into a top-tier defender, Roy Hibbert has been best known for protecting the rim and popularizing the concept of verticality in the league. In 2013-14, opponents shot 41.1% at the basket when Hibbert was protecting the rim. This season, that rate rose to 42.4%. This isn’t a big change especially when you factor in how often he was playing without David West, George Hill or Paul George — not to mention never playing with Lance Stephenson.

He still is a steadfast defender who allowed Indiana to stick to Frank Vogel’s defensive plan of funneling shooters into the 7’2″ big man or letting them take mid-range shots. This strategy keeps Hibbert’s rebound totals low since he is so focused on other duties, but Indiana has long been one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the league and they still were last year, finishing second behind only the Charlotte Hornets, per NBA.com. Yes, it is fun to mock a man as big as Hibbert for not grabbing more missed shots, but that’s not his job. And other than his few truly wretched efforts — those zero/zero games in the 2014 playoffs — this doesn’t harm the team whatsoever.

Individually, there has been a slight rise in his defensive rating, as it went above 100 in 2014-15 for the first time in three years. But the increase wasn’t to the point you’d think Hibbert had fallen off the wagon as a defender. Other than the rare great 3-point shooting center, Hibbert could handle his business pretty well against almost anyone. But when could sit back and protect the rim, few in the NBA were doing it better.

So were people really expecting him to become a 20-point per a night menace?

Is that just because he is 7’2″?

According to a Forbes article you are 17% more likely to be in the NBA if you are 7-foot or taller it doesn’t mean you are going to be great at everything. There are only 42 players listed over 7-foot that played last season according to Real GM yet only 20 averaged over 10-points a game, including Roy Hibbert. It isn’t as simple as “Be tall, score points.” This isn’t 1991 anymore. Yes, Hibbert averaged 10.6 points a game last season, but that is not far below his career average of 11.1.

Most of the frustration seems to have came from the fact that without Paul George or Lance Stephenson to take away shooting chances, Roy Hibbert’s numbers stayed the same.

Candace Buckner summed it up in her eulogy to the Pacers’ smash-mouth identity.

While Buckner pointed out that Hibbert was playing at about the same level, others have jumped on the anti-Hibbert bandwagon with gusto.

Consider Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyle’s Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde flip over the past week. Just a week ago he called for Indiana Pacers fans to calm down and stop embarrassing Indiana. His tune changed when Hibbert was traded.

He even closes out the line, “In other words, the anti-Hibbert way.”

But why?

In the 2013 conference finals, Hibbert averaged 22.1 points and 10.4 rebounds a game, but that had a lot to do with the fact the Miami Heat had no one to match-up against him. Those numbers weren’t really sustainable. That isn’t a knock on Hibbert. That’s just reality, as he has scored 20 or more points 61 times in his 533 games the Pacers.

So were fans expecting him to suddenly find an offensive game when he only scored 20+ point around 11.4% of the time. That’s just a little more than the chance Indiana had to get a top three pick in the draft this season. It would have been great for either to happen but the odds were not in Indiana’s favor.

So because he never lived up the expectations fans got what only happened 11% of the time he’s suddenly trash?

I don’t believe that.

It is easy to paint Roy Hibbert as the scapegoat, and why not? He wasn’t going to come back a year from now anyway. He’s headed to Los Angeles and it is easier to kick his a** on the way out.

But people forget so quickly how even the history of the smash-mouth era of Pacers basketball could have ended before it ever really got going if it weren’t for Hibbert.



Hibbert doesn’t block Carmelo Anthony’s dunk, and their 2013 second-round series against the Knicks ends up going to a Game 7 in New York. Maybe the Pacers lose and we don’t get a great Eastern Conference finals against the Heat?

Hibbert was never suppose to be an offensive scoring machine for Indiana. He was there to block and alter shots. Indiana’s entire defensive plan has been based around that. If Hibbert wasn’t Hibbert then it doesn’t work.

If you want Hibbert to be your scapegoat for Indiana’s problems go ahead. But just because he didn’t live up to that 3.7%, it doesn’t mean he was trash and you would be foolish to think that.

The Lakers terrible defense will get better with him guarding the paint and he will still probably score 10 points a game or more. The smash-mouth approach Indiana had in recent years was powered by Hibbert and West, but with it came a much slower pace. Indiana wanted to get faster and quicker and Hibbert wasn’t going to fit that mold.

Hibbert never changed, and the Pacers did. The Pacers are changing their approach to basketball and Roy Hibbert’s lack of offense doesn’t fit with Bird’s plan and that’s fine. It was time for Hibbert to leave and take his top-level rim protection with him.

The Pacers are headed one direction, he’s headed another.

Let’s just leave it at that.

http://8points9seconds.com/2015/07/06/roy-hibbert-the-indiana-pacers-scapegoat/

 

welcome to the west, roy..please dont shrink out here