What's Wrong with Roy Hibbert?

During the regular season, Roy Hibbert was one of the most dominating players at his position. He contended for the Defensive Player of the Year award all year (eventually finishing 2nd) and he helped the Pacers to the best record in the East.

But recently he hasn't looked like his usual self. The skills that make him one of the most formidable centers in the league seem to have evaporated. This slide started to take its toll on him earlier in the season, but now, in the play-offs, it has taken a turn for the worse.

Hibbert looks like a changed man in the play-offs... And the change isn't a good one

A quick look at his stats summarises the problem quite neatly. His minutes may have decreased by about 6 minutes per game compared to the regular season, but the rest of his stats have spiralled downwards by a greater extent. He's only grabbing 3.4 rebounds per game, a number that is beaten by Pacers guard Lance Stephenson (to name one of many). This fact is only made worse by the height difference between the guys, which currently stands at 9 inches (Stephenson standing at 6'5", Hibbert at 7'2"). He's also only scoring 4.8 points per game on 31% shooting. Hibbert was never a fantastic attribute to any team on the offensive end of the court, but these numbers are poor for any starter in the NBA. It was also announced recently that Hibbert has the worst Player Effiency Rating (PER) of any player to play in the All-Star game in the same season. The previous record stood at 5.3, set by Larry Costello in the 1965 playoffs. Hibbert reduced that number... To 0.8.

One statistic that Hibbert could always pride himself on was the amount blocks he made. He was 4th in the league this season, averaging 2.5 blocks every game. In the post-season, this number has dwindled to 0.6. The more worrying number that can be taken from the box score is that Roy Hibbert gets blocked 1.6 times a game (including one big block by Kyle Korver in Game 1). Opposing players seem to have lost the fear factor that was once held against him. When he swatting shots left, right and centre, players were afraid to come in the paint, in fear of being rejected. But now, due to his poor form, players are starting to attack the basket, and converting easy lay-ups and bank shots. As well as losing some of his presence, some of his leadership qualities seem to have vanished. Part of the job description for being a center is you have to be loud and direct your players. As the team's form went downhill, so did Hibbert's dominance, an effect that is only amplified by a squad as fractured as Indiana's (more on that later).

Roy Hibbert beat Larry Costello's (above) record for lowest post-season PER for an All-Star. The record stood for nearly 50 years.

Some sympathy has to be offered to Frank Vogel, head coach of the Indiana Pacers. He can't exactly go to his back-up plan, as that happens to be Andrew Bynum, who isn't exactly known as the personification of reliability. Bynum is currently out with knee soreness, and is unlikely to return before the end of the season. Vogel also has Ian Mahinmi at his disposal, but the Frenchman has failed to impress in his 6 seasons in the NBA, so is likely to stay on the bench. Two more options available to Vogel come in the form of Luis Scola and David West. Either West could slide down to the 5 position, or he could keep his preferred power forward position and play Scola at center. This, however, would leave the Pacers with a distinct lack of height, as both West and Scola stand at 6'9". All of these tactics are risky at any time of the season, never mind when you are trailing in game 6 of the play-offs, but this won't put Vogel off. When asked if he was going to consider changing his starting 5 ahead of the game, he replied "I'd consider everything at this point".

It's not exactly like Hibbert's facing up against the best players in the league (no disrespect to the Hawks' roster). The Hawks are the 8th seed for a reason. Their starting center is Pero Antic, a man who is only averaging 7 points per game and 4 boards himself. Drop down to the Hawks' bench and you'll find players such as Elton Brand and Mike Muscala. Brand is in the twilight years of his career, so his effect is limited to coming off the bench for 15-17 minutes a game. Muscala has only played in one post-season game this year, and even then, he only made a fleeting 5 minute appearance.

Frank Vogel has had a tough job on his hands considering the expectations placed upon the fairly inexperienced coach.

All in all, Roy Hibbert seems to be the epitome of the Pacers' problems this season. They haven't had the dominant season that everybody thought they were going to have. They coasted the last half of the season, knowing that a top two play-off berth in the East was guaranteed (barring a miracle run from one of the lower teams in the conference, such as the Bulls or Nets). Towards the tail end of this season, their campaign seemed to go off the rails a bit. There have been reports of training fights, the most recent one being between Lance Stephenson and Evan Turner. Frank Vogel, a coach in only his 4th season in the NBA must be finding it hard to control all those egos, whilst being expected to at least win the Eastern conference finals. All of these problems have mounted up, and with Roy Hibbert under-performing the most, he is the perfect scape goat to pin all the blame on.