Roy Hibbert is back, apparently. After one of the most striking slumps in NBA history, the All-Star center got 28 points last night against the Wiz and 9 rebounds.
It seemed at first as if it was all happening by accident, honestly. On the first possession of the game, the ball got brought up by George Hill, then passed to David West who came out to get it. Lance Stephenson came up to grab it from West, and it got knocked away towards the halfcourt by Bradley Beal. Lance recovered, but with the shot clock eaten up by these shenanigans, things had to move quickly or the possession would be lost. Hibbert came up from the low-post/baseline area, and set a high screen above the three-point line, and rolled to the basket. Lance dropped the ball into Hibbert, who bobbled it, made his way to the basket, and chucked it up there. It went in.
But then the ball kept being fed to Hibbert, and it was apparent that this may well have been something approaching a game-plan by Vogel. Chris Webber, calling the game, was horrified at this--something I mention both because it was amusing to hear and because I think a lot of other people watching had the same reaction as well. It is a weird, weird idea: not just because we are not sure Hibbert is up to the task, but also because, as Webber made clear, this does not seem like what the Pacers need to correct whatever is ailing with them.
Except, as we learned, it may well have been. And that initial possession shows why. Putting the team in a position where they have to force Hibbert to play a part gives the team focus. It is minimal focus, granted. But it is focus: to run a simple pick and roll for him required patience, and it had a clear goal. What happened on that play was simply that Hibbert had, because of the clock, to play the role of someone who was reliable, even though he hasn't seemed reliable at all since the All-Star Break. He had to show up and set a pick for Lance and make a good roll to the hoop to be open for the pass. There wasn't any time for more: this was the only thing they could do, and it had to happen. It was one of those things where simply doing the thing makes you into the person who does that type of thing much more than wanting to ever become that type of person actually does. The breakup of the offense set the bar low: all that was required was not high-performance execution but some minimal success in not wasting the possession. Hibbert came to the ball with the assumption that, well, if he wouldn't be someone who dominated that possession, he could at the very least be the guy who helped. And Lance and the rest of the offense didn't mind setting him up to be that guy--they basically just forced him into it.
Still, Hibbert's performance across the game was very much like it was here: it still couldn't shake the feeling of being exceptional, one-off, or simply just lucky. He would catch the ball in the post and on occasion just brick the thing at the basket--he threw up two airballs I think in the game. While he made 10 of 13, they didn't look like great shots going in. Some of the general shaky look of his game is to be expected, of course. Hibbert looks deliberate and in control mostly only on defense, and his post game isn't what you would call graceful. It mostly relies upon shot fakes, shakes, and delays to get the rhythm of his defender off and the ball up for a simple jump hook taken from the middle of the paint about 5-feet away, rather than anything that involves him intentionally producing his own space near the backboard like an up-and-under. He doesn't look good backing defenders down, and his one attempt to really do so involved too many dribbles and ending up tangled up with Gortat's feet on the floor. But the tenuous look of his success also had to do with just the general way he bobbled the ball a lot, managed to show up barely at the right time to get a nice pass or two from a generous Stephenson, and got a lot of calls to go his way. This isn't the entire story--for every shot he bobbled he caught another pretty cleanly, he held on to the ball in the post just long enough to give officials the opportunity to call some fouls on his defender, and one never just "shows up" at the right moment in the NBA, since to even get open involves arriving skillfully on time and according to often very exact intentions--but it was enough to make his performance seem more like it was the universe giving him a break than him actually returning to a level of skill he had before his collapse.
And maybe that's just what he needs--even more than if he were to have had a more solid game where it looked absolutely like he clearly earned every single point he got. What might cure Hibbert of his woes is not any development of his skills, but just some sense that the world is not conspiring to grind him down into nothing, and is actually is full of opportunities for him to succeed. This was perhaps what Vogel himself realized, in encouraging the players to feed a player mainly used for his defense on offense so much, and realized that not just Hibbert but the Pacers in general needed to play for once like the world was not out to eat them alive.
Now, this may very well not be enough to right the ship and get them into the next round--since in the playoffs everyone is indeed out to eat them alive!--but what was clear this night was that the Wiz played into the hands of this strategy. Together with their inability to click offensively, it in fact was the thing that may have given away the game. Gortat and Nene played Hibbert as if he was primarily being fed the ball to pass to a shooter or cutter. This is exactly as he should be played, but they might have played him more aggressively once he took it to the hole a few times, and several baskets could have been stopped if they had done this. Even more crucial is that they backed off even further once Hibbert started getting touchy calls from the refs, which was probably the opposite of what should have happened: one brutal, hard foul from the Nene would have been enough perhaps to break Hibbert's sense that the court, after being the brutal torture chamber that it has been for the past three months was turning into a cozy lounge where he was welcome to score.
The Wizards looked on occasion like they were trying to shake the Pacers in precisely this way. If John Wall had made that dunk at the end of the second quarter going into halftime, that would definitely had done the job. Gortat's ferocious dunks (one over Hibbert) were already impressive enough, and Wall and Beal were terrifying taking it to the rim. Unfortunately though for them Indiana simply didn't get fazed enough: they kept knocking away passes and forced the Wizards to rely more and more on pick and rolls at the top of the key. This forced them out of their usual inside-outside ball movement, though they kept up a steady pressure and almost won them the game. Without their usual staple of penetrating with Wall and kicking the ball out to get threes, they simply look off.
Nene and Gortat played amazing games, and if they can keep showing up like they did in this game, eventually something might give. Both passed the ball extremely well (Gortat had a wonderful shovel on a side pick and roll that set up a clear path to the basket, and Nene fired a bullet to a baseline cutter that just annihilated the defense), and if they can somehow use this to open up their shooters like their usual offensive weapon--Wall's drives to the basket--does, the Wiz might be able to return to the explosive offensive game they need to keep Indiana behind in games and demoralized. With two games in Washington coming up the home crowd might do the work for them, however.
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