Roy Hibbert. For a few months he was a punchline on everybody’s jokes. How can you be 7 Feet and only muster up a couple rebounds a game? I mean really. The boy doesn’t even have to jump! Just raise your arms and there’s the ball, simple, a 7 Foot monkey could do it.
But that’s in the past now. Well Roy Hibbert would hope so! He is now in the legendary purple & gold to play for the Lakers, a team that has been desperately looking for height ever since Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum left. Hibbert has had years where his defensive ability was immaculate. But recently it hasn’t, and Hibbert wants that immaculate ability back.
To Larry Bird and others in charge in Indiana, Roy Hibbert was a lost cause. A lumbering center with little offensive game and a disinterested temperament, they were happy pawning him off for nothing more than a future second-round draft pick. The Lakers, however, view Hibbert as a player who can not only regain his standing as an All-Star big man, but anchor their anemic defense, which last year ranked second-worst in the NBA. […] “I expect to play at an All-Star defensive level, and everything else will come,” Hibbert said Wednesday.
“In this business,” Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said, “if you can have somebody who’s that size, who’s 28 years old, that clearly wants to rebirth his career, I think that’s a good risk.”
Now you say that, but I swear I’ve heard sentences like that years before. Guy at that size, about to reach the prime of his career, yada yada yada. I have heard it before, and honestly, I want to see him average 15-10. Until then, it’s all chit chat.
