NBA Fail: With Game On The Line, Roy Hibbert Shoots A Terrible Three
With seconds on the clock, there are countless players in the NBA that you want with the ball in their hands, and if the team needs a three, there are sharpshooters who have trained their entire lives for that shot. Indiana Pacer center Roy Hibbert is not the guy in either of those two scenarios.
But on Thursday night, with the Pacers down by two in overtime to the Washington Wizards in D.C., the team called a time out to design a play for a game winning shot. Coming out of the timeout, the Pacers set up a play that was seemingly designed for (and called for by head coach Frank Vogel) the seven foot, two inch Hibbert to fire an unlikely shot to win the game. And as the world witnessed, it looked to be a bad call on Vogel’s part.
Hibbert, who has only hit seven three-pointers in his NBA career, hadn’t hit a shot all night–in regulation or overtime–but someone in the blue and gold thought that him taking the three point shot would be a great idea. The play had several moving components, designed to confuse the defense and get a Pacers player an open jumper. As SBNation pointed out, the Indiana Pacers players called on to confuse the Wizards defense weren’t very good at their jobs. And Hibbert wasn’t the man the play was designed for. It was for Chris Copeland, who actually has a three point shot, to get free for the game-winning attempt. But when the Pacers failed to get the separation they needed, and with Hibbert wide open, he got the ball and took the shot. As Comcast SportsNet Washington reported, Marcin Gortat, the Wizards center, said it best about Roy Hibbert’s shot.
I realized he really got big balls to take that. I mean, I don’t know what was the play. I was really surprised he took that three. I’ve seen games like that. He doesn’t score from the field even one bucket and he take a three. I’m just glad he didn’t make it.
Roy Hibbert is coming off a season last year where his confidence was shaken and his play suffered, as explained by the Inquisitr last May. He all but disappeared in the playoffs, and the Indiana Pacers, who had the best record in the East, were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals by the Miami Heat. With shaky confidence anyway, and the team’s best player, Paul George, out with a broken leg, the Indiana Pacers are in serious trouble. Especially if Roy Hibbert is the one lining up to take game winning three pointers.
Do you think that Roy Hibbert should be taking game winning threes? Are the Indiana Pacers in trouble? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image courtesy of Bleacher Report]
