Nylon Calculus: Roy Hibbert and the search for truth in defensive stats

The world moves in bursts and spurts, unevenly changing and exploding in creation. We’ve all seen technology grow and expand in ways no one thought possible, from computers the size of rooms to ones that can fit in your pocket in just a matter of decades, or how we learned to fly in a rickety wooden plane, and just 66 years later we landed on the moon. War changed in unforeseen ways too, going from battles fought on horseback to ones with flying contraptions and poisonous gas with metal beasts crawling through the muck and smoke.

The old mainstays of wars, which had stood for hundreds of years in some ways, were made obsolete virtually overnight during World War I with the inventions of heavy artillery, aircraft, and submarines — horses had been winning battles for millenia, while battleships had commanded the seas valiantly. But that ended. The brightest minds had no idea this great wave of change was coming, and their world had been completely transformed.

Something seen as the pinnacle of its form can be rendered ineffectual in a shockingly small amount of time. That’s the burden of change. It’s frightening but essential to life.

Prologue

The NBA has seen a resurgence in big men, from centers with surprising skills to position-fluid stars with the kind of height you’d see in the frontcourt. This trend has gone in step with the data-ball revolution, where the concept of spacing drives major roster decisions and defense has gone from counting rebounds to tracking how many shots your opponent misses near you — or doesn’t even attempt.

People value Joel Embiid for his monster blocked shots that are followed with 3-pointers at the other end of the court or the way Draymond Green can cover every spot on the floor, holding down the fort at center while dishing and shooting like a wing, yet one trail-blazer in big man analytics has been largely forgotten and discarded. Roy Hibbert is already a relic of a different age, an unsigned 31-year-old former all-star center who’s not sidelined in his prime because of injury or bizarre circumstance but because his talents have largely withered or are no longer required.

Aside from some brief media appearances that have little to do with basketball, the NBA world has not been paying much attention to Roy Hibbert. The last time he made a headline was a Milwaukee Bucks trade where he was sent to the Denver Nuggets for a heavily protected second round pick. The protection was designed so Denver never has to send a pick; Roy was essentially traded for a bag of nothingness.

While some people didn’t even know he was on the Bucks, others were confused why Denver would make the trade: it was done so they could hit the salary floor. Teams whose salaries don’t reach this floor pay a penalty of the full difference between those salaries and 90 percent of the salary cap. After a disappointing season with the Lakers and a forgettable stint as a backup in Charlotte, Hibbert became contract fodder and shipped around so other teams can save money. This is unceremonious for a former two-time All-Star, runner-up in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, and a core piece for one of the strongest non-LeBron James teams we’ve seen in the East in the past few years. Even the most legendary of players eventually become vagabonds and bit parts, far from the illustrious prime where they made their names. But this case is different.

He’s only 31-years-old, and he’s in good health.

The question of what happened to Roy Hibbert and what could explain his decline is a complicated one made nebulous by our very understanding of defensive value and how players fit the environments compared to how environments are created by the players themselves. There’s no easy answer here, and an investigation dives into a player with a bewildering career marked by sudden highs and lows, including the time when many smart NBA people thought he was one of the best players in the league.

Roy’s Rrise

Roy Hibbert’s career is one marked by epochs, where he’s transformed from a lowly player to, arguably, his team’s most important piece, and soon after his value dissipates, for a variety of reasons, and he’s forced once again to work harder and reach a higher level. In high school, he coasted on his sheer size, but once he made it to Georgetown, the college known for its NBA big men, he was buried on the bench and his lack of athleticism was embarrassing. He couldn’t do a single push-up or a squat — not a squat with any added weight, mind you, but the basic action of bending down. In his free time, he was obsessed with basketball video games, playing as someone with the skills of a Unicorn and the ratings of a GOAT, but on the court he had little speed and skill outside the paint.

With some hard work, he transformed his body to adjust to the NCAA and steadily improved: he was selected to the Big East’s second-team his sophomore year, and made the first team his junior and senior years, highlighted by a Final Four appearance that junior season. He didn’t become Joel Embiid, but his weaknesses were softened to the point where he was no longer a liability in several areas against college competition.

During the draft, however, it was assumed Roy wouldn’t be able to compete with professional-level athleticism. That did not appear to be a terrible assumption given the first part of his career, but he was still a starter and, remarkably, it was the period of his career where he was most active as a scorer. He was a real low-post scorer, and he was skilled enough to be a usable mid-range shooter. With Indiana’s lack of offense, that was enough for him to be a true option on those teams. His percentages were low, however, and none of his other stats particularly stood out besides blocks — and even those weren’t noteworthy to most people because his minutes were in the 20’s.

As the No, 17 pick, being unnoteworthy wasn’t a surprise. His biggest news item in those early years was his appearance on Parks and Recreation. He was still heralded for his work ethic in overcoming his lack of athleticism and asthma to become an NBA starter, but that’s damning praise — you don’t want backhanded compliments to open your scouting bio. However, after Frank Vogel took over as interim coach near the end of the 2011 season — later named full-time head coach — Hibbert’s career transformed, and I think even he was surprised at what would happen next.

Hibbert’s peak

Back in the 2012 season, the center position in the NBA was perilously thin. This was when the idea of an NBA center was based on a stricter, older codified set of rules; you had fewer skilled guys under 6-foot-11 being labeled centers, even if they truly only played that position. When picking All-Star rosters, where you had to pick at least two centers, the issue of the lack of star talent at the top was readily apparent, especially in the Eastern Conference. After Dwight Howard, the cast was mostly defensive big men with limited scoring and 7-footers with heavy weaknesses.

Danny Granger, most everyone’s favorite to become Indiana’s All-Star representative, correctly predicted that Roy Hibbert would get the nod. The Pacers had one of the better records in the conference, and making the team was partly a function of how good your teammates were. They were a decent roster of above average guys without a clear star, minus maybe Granger, but someone had to be picked. He had modest per game averages, but he had the right circumstances.

While many people would gripe about his inclusion even if they were hard-pressed to find better alternatives, Roy Hibbert definitely deserved praise for leveraging his gigantic size into a valuable NBA commodity. But this was just the beginning — the 2012 playoffs would push him further into the NBA’s upper echelon. That was the first meeting of those Pacers and the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh Heat. Against the indamously small Heat, Hibbert’s best asset — his 7-foot-2, 280-pound frame — was maximized. Miami had no reasonable counter to him, and by matching up with Hibbert the Heat would be punting their own identity. He was one of the reasons Indiana gave the eventual champions a serious push, although it was party by design and partly due to an injury to Chris Bosh — again, Roy won due to circumstance. The Heat would win, of course, and would go on to earn LeBron James’ first championship, while Hibbert solidified his identity of being a master paint protector.

The 2013 season would end up being his zenith as an NBA player, and it would coincide with a major innovation in basketball stats. Kirk Goldsberry, now the VP of Strategic Research for the San Antonio Spurs, presented the groundbreaking paper, “The Dwight Effect: A New Ensemble of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA.” This brought the nearest-defender field goal percentage into the world, and it could have been called the Hibbert effect: he led that data-set with the lowest nearest-defender field goal percentage for close range shots.

In fact, later during the season Kirk Goldsberry would pen an article on Roy Hibbert himself anointing the rim protection stat and naming Roy its king. This was after his famous block on Carmelo Anthony in the playoffs, and it was during the time when verticality fully entered the NBA lexicon. Again, Hibbert, who was not gifted with explosiveness or quickness, used his god-given abilities, his immense size, to excel. He was skilled at exploiting this rule, blocking off the rim with the wall of his body with his arms extended to the edge of the rim. As Goldsberry’s statistics showed, he didn’t even have to block those shots to impact the game.

According to Baxter Holmes, Hibbert’s inspiration was watching Dwight Howard defend a shot during the 2009 Finals — there was plenty of contact but no foul. Confused, he asked his assistant coach, Frank Vogel, who explained the principle of verticality. Hibbert soon became obsessed with the concept, and eventually became its master, labeled the “LeBron of verticality” in one article. This action of negation, doing nothing on paper, a passive form of defense, would become his signature, and it would earn him the respect of the basketball world.

Roy’s ultimate peak was probably the 2013 Conference Finals, where his team challenged the Miami Heat to a full seven-games before being defeated. He averaged a staggering (for Hibbert) 22 points per game along with 10 rebounds. Although he averaged only one block per game, his defense was undeniably valuable. This was also the season the Pacers were fully formed with their starting lineup: George Hill, Lance Stephenson, Paul George, and David West all around their defensive anchor. They led the league in defensive rating, over six points below the league’s mean in points per possession allowed. Hibbert, who was only tenth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, below Paul George, was beginning to see his reputation grow, especially after the playoffs.

Overall, Hibbert’s stats look best for the 2012 season, probably because it was one of the rare ones where his shooting percentages were near league average. He actually didn’t make the All-Star team in 2013 — most of his stats, besides the rim protection, were atrocious during the first half of the season, especially those shooting percentages. But he averaged 15 points and 8 boards after the All-Star break with a true shooting percentage a little over 56 percent. It was a flummoxing switch, and because of his visible duality people saw what they wanted — fans claimed the true Hibbert was that second-half beast who could post-up and punish smaller teams like Miami while leading the best defense in the league. Critics would point to his first half numbers, noting how tired he looked at times and how the low-percentage behemoth couldn’t keep up with the faster players.

The 2014 season would see this pattern continue. First-half Roy Hibbert was a star — his offense was decent for a center, and the Pacers had an awe-inspiring defense. They were outscoring teams by nearly 8 points per game, impressive considering their pace, and allowing 9.3 points per 100 possessions less than the average team before the All-Star break, which was downright historic. At that point, they had the lowest defensive rating relative to the league average since 1974 at 91 percent, bettering the Tim Duncan-Spurs, the Patrick Ewing-Knicks, and the Wallace-and-Wallace-Pistons. You had to go back to the 1960’s Celtics, led by the venerable Bill Russell, to find a better defensive rating. Hibbert came in second in the Defensive Player of the Year voting too, snatching several first-place votes from some smart people. He was a Gatorade-gulping star who made the All-Star team again, with some respectable basketball people choosing him for the starting lineup.

However, the Pacers mysteriously ran out of gas during the latter part of the season, and so too did Roy Hibbert, especially, of course, his shooting percentages. They didn’t even recover during the playoffs versus the Miami Heat, his famed foes. He was a non-factor in the series, and in fact the Pacers struggled to get through the first round, needing the full seven games against the Atlanta Hawks. Roy Hibbert was exposed in that series and relegated to a mere 21 minutes per game because his value diminished severely against the five-out Hawks who used Pero Antic, a high-volume outside shooter who’s now out of the league, at center. The league, now obsessed with 3-point shooting centers, was changing, and Hibbert, one of the least versatile all-stars in recent history, could not adapt.

Roy’s fall

The 2015 season was Roy Hibbert’s last in Indiana, as neither he nor the Pacers could recapture their magic. They didn’t even make the playoffs. His prime truly lasted only two full seasons, and at age 28 he was seeing the twilight emerge from the horizon. Larry Bird, managing the team, noted that the team would go for a more modern style, going smaller and focusing on speed and skill. That was a death sentence for Hibbert in Indiana, and he was traded that summer to the L.A. Lakers, who did not regard him as anywhere close to their first choice but merely a stopgap for a year with their enormous cap space void.

Back in 2013, I saw Hibbert’s first half of the 2012-13 season as the aberration, explaining it with a wrist injury he suffered in the playoffs that didn’t fully heal for months. However, his production never recovered even after he was traded. I thought the Lakers would be a better environment for his offense in some ways because they had so many shot creators that he wouldn’t be pressed into a bigger role, thus helping his efficiency — but that didn’t happen. His usage rate sunk by nearly half, and his efficiency was still near that Mendoza line of 50 true shooting percentage. He would still block shots and protect the rim, but he was near useless outside of the paint, and the NBA was shaping up as a place where every player, including the center, was darting around the court and sharing roles.

Lakers fans were talked into the pickup of Roy during that offseason, and it made some sense at the time. They really needed help on defense, and he wasn’t far from his all-star seasons. One could argue that LA wasn’t the best situation for the veteran center, who needed a more stable atmosphere and a coach devoted to rebuilding him. Enter Charlotte, where Steve Clifford and assistant Patrick Ewing were devoted to revitalizing his career. This was a team that utilized Al Jefferson, the noted low-post (plodding) scorer, for years with some success. It was about an ideal a situation as Hibbert could find.

Unfortunately, the Hibbert revitalization project was once again a failure. Fans gave up on him, and he lost his spot in the starting lineup. What’s interesting is that he was completely forgotten about in the basketball consciousness. Save for an article where he talks while playing video games, his impact in the basketball world was minuscule. The Hornets thought this too. He had turned back into that pumpkin and could not regain his former powers; he was the stiff everyone feared he would become so many years ago.

By the trade deadline, Hibbert would be gone. Going to the Bucks for fellow center Miles Plumlee, Kevin Pelton actually gave the Bucks an A — but it wasn’t for acquiring the former All-Star. It was because Plumlee had a three-year contract and Roy’s was expiring. He never actually played for Milwaukee because he was soon traded for a protected second-round pick. And after six games, he was gone from the league — and we may never see him again.

In a bit of a poetic twist, Hibbert’s rim protection actually did not fall precipitously during these down years. His environments changed more than anything. The difference in his rim protection field-goal percentage compared to his team’s was similar in magnitude on the Lakers compared to his Pacers seasons. That’s not necessarily the most important version of defended field goal percentage, but it’s something to keep in mind. He retained that signature skill even when his overall value eroded.

Funnily enough, Hibbert’s shooting percentages were actually great during that 2017 season. He was shooting near 70 percent around the rim and got to the line a little more too. But he was shooting less often than in his prime, and he was easily exploited on defense. He could not stay in front of NBA-caliber athletes, and after hitting 30-years-old it was unlikely he could learn any more tricks to adjust to the fast-paced league. He had lived inside the paint, the only place on the basketball court where he had an advantage. But with NBA teams employing more big man shooters and running more sets where he had to run outside and help on defense, his value sunk to abysmal levels. And that was it — he’s still an unrestricted free agent, waiting for a call that may never come from a league that no longer requires his services.

Defensive value in light of his fall

"Roy Hibbert earns about $14.5 million per season on a max-level contract, and just about every even mildly analytics-oriented person I know says, matter-of-factly, that Hibbert is underpaid given his on-court value — perhaps grossly so. Some folks have pegged his value in the $25 million–$30 million range.– Zach Lowe in 2013"

I’m not sure what to make of Roy Hibbert’s peak, as it were. Was it a mirage? Or was he truly a valuable player who fell apart quickly and at odd times?

Maybe people have forgotten just how much we all valued him a few short years ago, but you can see that quote from Zach Lowe, probably the most respected basketball writer, stating that he knew analytics-minded folks who would peg his value way past the max value (at the time) range. Lowe himself respected Hibbert too, and thought he deserved a lot of the praise. In fact, Lowe named him his “athlete of the year” for 2013, repeating the line about the $25 to $30 million value, this time attributing it to GMs. That magical year seems so long ago — after all, it’s hard to believe now that David Lee made the All-Star game over Stephen Curry back then — but I don’t think we can dismiss those accounts; it wasn’t an anomaly. The league really did love and value Hibbert.

One could cite the NBA’s tweak of the verticality rule as the inciting incident in Hibbert’s demise, but he was declining before the rule change and it doesn’t explain his offensive implosion. Plus, his rim protection was his one skill that stayed with him. But there’s an alternative hypothesis: what if he wasn’t as good as some people assumed?

Turning back to 2013 again, when Indiana’s head coach Frank Vogel was asked who he’d pick for Defensive Player of the Year, he actually replied Paul George, citing his ability to guard “just about every position.” At the time, I was actually critical of that notion because I believed perimeter players almost always had a lot less value on defense and that the higher-end impact belonged to big men, primarily centers. But I think I was over-generalizing, and there’s a case to be made that George was more valuable on that end of the court.

Going to the stats, the metric RAPM, which does have its flaws, can at least show major trends and basic impact. It’s useful here because it’s not influenced by blocks, rebounds, or other peripheral stats — it’s just how about well your team plays when you’re on the court while adjusting for who else is playing. Using data from Jeremias Englemann, you can see how Hibbert compares to Paul George in single year RAPM throughout his prime. Surprisingly, George out-rated him every year of his prime except for 2015, when George became more of a scorer and less of a defender. Even multi-year RAPM for 2014 — it’s weighed by recency — favors Paul George with a +2.69 mark compared to +1.8 for Hibbert. And several players, including other wings, had even better ratings. Defensive king he was not.

Table: single year defensive RAPM

If you go by box-score stats, Hibbert gains some ground, depending on the metric. BPM, for example, gives the big guy nearly an entire point of an advantage on defense. Then there’s RPM, a mix of plus-minus and various other stats, which oddly enough debuted at the same time rim protection stats did — Hibbert’s prime coincided with a transitional phase of NBA statistics. RPM was, again, more favorable for Roy. But those counting stats are often biased for big men — it’s tougher for a wing player to stand out in, say, Defensive BPM without an enormous steal rate.

The basic stats of defense — rebounds, blocks, and steals — say alarmingly little about real defense. There’s too much that’s lost and glossed over, and it’s too complicated to analyze easily. But Hibbert is a bit of an oddity, and you can actually simplify things. Besides rim protection, he helped very little on defense — he wasn’t creating turnovers, he still fouled a bit, he was slow as molasses outside of the paint, and although his rebounding concerns were overblown because he focused on boxing out, he definitely wasn’t a rebounding force. Thus, the exercise becomes, how great was his value of rim protection alone?

Let’s look at an estimate of his rim protection value from Andrew Johnson, who’s been using a SportVU metric for years. According to his data, Hibbert had 1.25 points per 100 possessions of value from rim protection alone in 2014. That’s sizable, but typical leaders in defensive PT-PM ranged from 3.5 to 4 points per 100 possessions. In other words, you need more than rim protection to be the league’s best defender — it’s not enough.

Let’s take this further. If you gave Hibbert complete credit for “lowering” an opponent’s field goal percentage at the rim by comparing that percentage to the league average, you could credit him with 4.1 points per 100 possessions. (Site note: PT-PM is regressed heavily, so its scale is shrunken compared to many other metrics.) And by the way, PT-PM saw him at his peak was one of the better defenders in the league but not the best, which I think is ultimately reasonable.

Using opponent shooting numbers, we can also estimate his rim deterrence. Using 2014 as a reference point again, based on opponent shooting data from stats.NBA.com, his team allowed 2 fewer points per 100 possessions within five feet of the rim when he was on the court. Obviously, he shouldn’t receive full credit for that, but that’s also using the baseline of Indiana’s team, not the average one. However, that was actually his best performance during his prime. For a couple of his seasons, he was virtually neutral, and one year significantly below average.

Table: Roy Hibbert’s rim deterrence stats, per 100 possessions

Counter-intuitively, Indiana’s opponents did not shoot less often at the rim during his prime, which seems odd for the rim protection king. They were a good team overall on defense though, and they allowed fewer shots inside than the average team anyway. Also, perhaps his teammates were funneling guys into him at the rim enough to sway the numbers here. But it may serve as more evidence that other than defending in the paint, he wasn’t a special defender. Players often allow more shots at the rim when they’re beaten by quicker players — definitely a possibility for the slow-footed center. Though in actuality he did intentionally cede ground and backpedal, letting players come inside.

I do need to take a brief pause here though — I know my case here isn’t iron-clad. We still don’t completely understand these statistics, and I don’t know how to balance rim deterrence with protection with overall plus-minus stats. But to the best of my ability, I have reached some sort of conclusion about his defense. I just wouldn’t be surprised if it’s overturned later.

Using the most optimistic of assumptions, it’s tough to craft a case for Roy Hibbert being a hands-down Defensive Player of the Year player. By rim protection alone, it’s not quite enough, especially because his rim deterrence was strangely absent. It’s a little befuddling because we all believed players feared going inside when he was in the game, and Indiana overall was a great defense  who shouldn’t have fallen off minus one player, he should surely have more of an effect than, say, his old backup, Ian Mahinimi, who’s a fine player but not an era-defining defender.

Besides Indiana’s impeccable defensive rating for that short while, there’s little to tie Roy Hibbert to elite defensive player status. Although his anemic rebounding numbers on that end of the court were misleading because he boxed out and let the wing players grab the boards, he was still only average at best there. He didn’t create turnovers either — he’d only net about half a steal per 36 minutes. He was near useless out of the paint and had trouble defending anyone on the perimeter. That lack of versatility is harrowing, as it means with certain matchups an All-Star caliber player’s value can be nullified instantly, which doesn’t sound very all-star caliber anymore. And lastly, Indiana’s defense did not ebb and flow with his presence, as perimeter scorer and defender Paul George usually had the better impact numbers. Roy was definitely a very good defender, and when used properly and kept in a proper role at the rim he could help anchor a fantastic defense. Maybe he just wasn’t as good as some of us thought.

Conclusion

Unquestionably, what you have is a giant player with a narrow skill-set on defense. Roy Hibbert’s primary value, rim protection, was arguably not great enough on its own to push him into “best of the league” status due to his other deficiencies. He was overrated for a short time like a lot of other players due to some great playoff performances at the right time and against the right opponent. In some match-ups, he was quite valuable, but once the league started to change, emphasizing movement and big men being used on the perimeter, and people figured out how to attack him, he became nearly useless. Paul George was the star of those teams, and it’s no coincidence that the Pacers fell off the map in 2015 when George was out for the year.

Strangely, Hibbert’s death knell may have been the series against the Atlanta Hawks and Pero Antic, who’s also not in the league anymore. Maybe it wasn’t truly the catalyst that drove him out of the league, but it’s at least a fitting symbol of what ultimately destroyed him. Antic, like Roy, had a narrow range of skills. He basically only set screens, bumped players inside, and launched 3-pointers at low percentages. However, when the Hawks played him, it meant Hibbert had no one to guard near the rim, and that league leading protection was rendered nearly void. We all marvel at Kristaps Porzingis, Joel Embiid, Marc Gasol extending his range, and others, but it was Antic who helped signal the next era, where versatility and perimeter skills moved to the forefront of the position.

Roy Hibbert couldn’t adapt to the changing NBA world. Maybe those inconsistent years in his prime were due to a physical ailment; it could have been related to his asthma, not something you’d guess an NBA player would have. But there’s a plausible scenario out there where he actually did recover physically, but by the time he did the NBA had changed enough and knew how to counter him that it didn’t matter.

The ex-Pacers big man is like an old battleship built in the mid-20th century. Once intimidating and nearly invulnerable with its size and power, a new era defined by speed and new skills redefined what the battleship was. It was a hulking box of metal, a large target for quicker opponents with a variety of weaponry. There is no active battleship in the world, even though it’s a symbol of naval superiority. Roy Hibbert could commiserate with that outdated beast of the open seas — both had far less impact than people assume, despite a few high-profile engagements. And now they’re both relics of an older era, beaten by improved versions of themselves.

Next: Nylon Calculus -- The 2017-18 NBA season at the quarter mark

The big difference is that we’ve nearly forgotten about Roy Hibbert, the 7-foot-2 big man everyone fell in love with during that magical year of 2013. He’s a reminder to cherish what we’re experiencing right now, as the All-Star center of a promising contender fell from his lofty heights to contract fodder in less than three years. Roy Hibbert — that king of rim protection and master of verticality, that lovable hard worker who had long spells of mediocrity — helped ignite a statistical revolution that would later find him useless, and he’s just a faint memory in the back of our consciousness.

But even if he never plays again we should not forget him; he’s a living metonymy for the data-ball world and a lesson in the dangers and complexities of evaluating defense. The more we learn about how defense works and how individuals influence it, the better we can understand what happened during his prime because I still don’t fully understand it.