Lola Bunny is arguably the biggest What If in NBA history.

Bradley was already on the team when Dirk was drafted, if I remember right 

Shawn Bradley was shipped to the Mavs in February 1997, well over a year before Dirk was drafted.

George Hill’s advanced stats through the early & mid 2010s were incredible. Had a couple seasons where the only other guards with higher EPM were big name superstars. Allegedly (according to Jeff Teague), Hill was PG’s favorite guy to play with on that team. Extremely underrated & reliable 2-way player, in the regular season and in the playoffs.

Pacers had David West too. He was a little past his peak, but still a killer.

Only weak link of that starting 5 was Lance Stephenson. A total wildcard. Technically Danny Granger was supposed to be starting over him, but Granger washed with injuries and couldn’t get medical clearance.

Yeah the interestingthing with Hibbert tho is that he fell off a cliff as soon as all star weekend happened 

He never rebounded that well for his size to begin with

the year he was an all-star, when playoffs came around he had multiple games with less than 10pts AND ZERO REBOUNDS. it was crazy seeing it. im surprised he was never investigated for that performance. lol

edit: it was in 2014

In the same season he went from All-Star for a number one seed Pacers team to putting up 0 points and 0 rebounds in the playoffs as a 7 footer.

Those Pacers teams were my childhood. The story goes a scrappy team of young role players and vets starting gaining some momentum. They played a super physical, slow, but kinda with youthful energy and flair. In 2012 the Pacers defeated the Magic in the 1st round, then went on and played an insanely scrappy 6 game series against the Heat. Danny Granger led the team but it wasn’t enough firepower to hang with the Big 3. Many people just saw them as a young team that overachieved, nothing more.

Now it is 2013 and the Heat get stronger with Ray Allen and the Pacers do little to their team. Many see them as taking a step back as their star player Danny Granger was out for basically the whole season. But they kept winning thanks to the rise of PG-13, Hibbert, and Lance Stephenson. They make the playoffs yet again, but people still write them off due to their youth and missing their number one scoring option and leader. But they shocked Melo and the Knicks in the 2nd round, and it was a rematch against the Heat in a truly David v Goliath story. The Heatles vs the Pacers without their top scorer. And PG-13, Hibbert, Lance all fought tooth and nail against this Heat team that went on a 27 game streak just a few months earlier. Hibbert on D gave the Heat so many problems and he looked unstoppable at times on offense. PG-13 was establishing himself a star in the making being the leader and going toe to toe with peak LeBron and D-Wade. Lance was a menace playing with an intensity no one on Miami matched, David West and George Hill were super tough, steady role players too. Don’t forget Hansbrough ready to fight at a moment’s notice off the bench. They took the Heat to a 7 game series but they just didn’t have enough

Now going into the 2014 season they have all the momentum. Many people had them penciled in as a finals favorite with Granger coming back. The Heat prepared for another clash and they signed Greg Oden just to be a Roy Hibbert stopper (wild times) and the Pacers bolstered their roster with a solid bench and in the beginning of the regular season they look like the best in the East. But when Danny Granger returned he wasn’t the same clearly affected by his injury, but the thing the front office never realized he was still their emotional leader all the young players relied on. So In a move to get in even stronger, they traded Danny Granger for Evan Turner, and things quickly fell apart chemistry wise and with locker room tensions between Lance, Hibbert, Turner, and PG 13. They ended the season getting routinely blown out but still managed to snag the one seed due to their dominant start. They barely snuck past the 8 seed Hawks, beat the Wizards in 6, and then again the Heat in 2014. But this year, the Heat figured out the Pacers tricks and beat the dysfunctional Pacers in a clean gentleman’s sweep in 5.

Lance Stephenson left to Charlotte, Paul George broke his leg, Roy Hibbert was useless in just a year, and those gritty young Indiana Pacers were evaporated in less than a year.

Roy Hibbert’s niche was in being an elite vertical rim protector who could wall up against post scorers and vaporise rim attempts , while serve as a good screening body and dunker’s spot man on offensively. He really couldn’t create efficient offense for himself, and was less good as a lob threat and roll man than you’d expect (though still serviceable). His problem came down to the fact that the NBA revolutionised almost overnight. The season right after his best year was the season that both Steph and Harden suddenly broke out as MVP calibre players, and suddenly it wasn’t good enough for centers to defend vertically, they were being dragged out to the perimeter and had to be able to move their feet. A lot of his defensive value kinda evaporated in that context, and without that instead of being a DPOY calibre guy he was more like a standard role player. He didn’t get worse suddenly, but his niche did.

Roy was drafted to the Pacers as a very raw prospect. Good defender, but lacked a bag & wasn’t very confident by NBA standards.

The Pacers built Roy up to All Star form. Mostly defensively, but his bag had gotten decent too and he was much more confident in general. Gave LeBron fukn fits every match-up.

Pacers were running away with the 1 seed in 2013-2014, and they had taken the Heatles to 7 games in the ECF the year prior. But mid season, shit started hitting the fan:

• Larry Bird trades away Danny Granger, who had been chronically injured for a while but who was THE locker room leader of that team (as well as PG’s mentor). Evan Turner was the return, and he was a bum for us.
• Larry Bird signs Andrew Bynum. Bynum did well in the game or two that he actually played, and this fucked w/ Hibbert’s confidence. All for nothing, as Bynum’s knee gave out long before the playoffs.
• Guys start beefing with each other. Among other things, Roy hits the media with his “selfish dudes” comment about Lance Stephenson after a bad loss to the Wizards. Shit was in shambles. After all, Larry traded away Danny Granger and that team was too young for David West to handle by himself.

Pacers dropped a bunch of games. Almost lost the 1 seed, but barely held on. In round 1, Atlanta came out trolling playing small ball and it totally exposed Hibbert’s (lack of) perimeter defense. This killed his confidence on the other end, and the team struggled to adjust. A pretty bad Atlanta team took the Pacers to 7. Somehow the Pacers made it back to the ECF, but lost to the Heat in 6 instead of the previous year’s 7. Couple big no-shows from Hibbert and PG in that series.

The next year, the NBA issued a clarification to the the verticality rule in such a way that really fucked with Hibbert’s game. Teams also started playing a lot more small ball. It was a league trend, but one that teams were eager to whip out against Hibbert & the Pacers. Roy’s confidence was totally shot, and it was around this time that rumors about PG fucking Hibbert’s wife started flaring up. Dude was toast.

Nba teams shifted into smaller and quicker lineups with more spacing.

Roy Hibbert’s playstyle couldn’t keep up with the changes.

I feel like it was Hibbert’s offense (career .465 FG% for a 7’2” guy who took 72.45% of his career FGA inside 10FT is garbage) and rebounding (just 9.8 per 75 possessions career) that were covertly the reasons for his getting pushed out of the league. He just didn’t play big enough for his size and slow-ness, and it never improved and stopped being effective.

Even in his prime, Hibbert was a foul machine (4 fouls per 75 possessions in 2011-12, and 4.8 fouls per 75 possessions career), which people don’t acknowledge either.

Essentially, Hibbert lacked mobility and enjoyed success when “verticality” was accepted. This allowed him to jump straight up in the air as defenders jump into him. It turns out, he wasn’t jumping straight up, more jumping and leaning towards the defender with his arms raised up. The definition of verticality became more strict, and the refs started calling fouls. Hibbert started declining ever since. The nail on the coffin was when Andrew Bynum tried a comeback, being Hibbert’s backup. It was night and day, in what a big man should do. Rebounding, rim protection, offensive touch… Bynum was noticeably better, and the team still tried to support Hibbert.

TLDR; the definition of verticality was applied differently after the all star break, which took all the effectiveness from Hibbert.

Verticality

He looked 30 in his rookie year with Houston, so it makes sense that he’d look 32 as a Clipper

He does that himself enough

No longer in the shed

Would have been back at 36ers but his Fiba suspension from his failed drug test stopped that.

There was a long comment somewhere either on reddit or youtube from some guy who claimed to be his neighbor and he said he and his entourage would have daily and nightly parties and would absolutely trash the house they were in

That’s a fucking killer nickname

Biggest cheat code in 2k

I used to follow his snapchat and it was mostly just him playing as himself on 2k. Whenever he was asked about his improvement he would say he’s just trying to get his 2k rating up.

Didn’t he destroy his ankle and then had to have shoulder surgery? That’ll fuck with your jump shot.

He had a botched ankle surgery that they had to go back in and re do. He was out of the league shortly after that. For a guy who already wasnt very athletic im sure that sapped what little he had. This was clearly a case of injury doing a guy in.

IIRC he got overpaid and then never lived up to his contract, and all the subsequent shitting on for being an one-dimensional sharpshooter whose shot was no longer falling consistently enough to justify his contract size did him in

I can’t for the life of me remember the game, but I watched his career end in live time as the other team relentlessly ran every offensive set straight at him everytime he was on the floor. It felt like 80 points got scored on him that game as the primary defender. He was bbq chicken.

Yuta had an unsustainable level of unrealistic red-hot shooting for the first 2+ months as a Net, which ended up with spreading misunderstandings and disappointment.

Everyone including Suns front office got tricked by the media overhype thinking he was a 3&D when in reality he was kinda 0&0 who was an inconsistent low-volume 3pt shooter throughout his career and a not good enough defender despite his size/hustles.

The new season under high-pressures & expectations exposed who he really is at the NBA level. He couldn’t performe well at all during his Suns tenure, and that mid-season trade to Grizzlies left him devastated. I watched his Japanese media interview in Memphis right after the trade and he looked visibly mentally drained af.

After the season he told fans during an instagram live, that the situation got worse every day. He became unable to even catch the ball or move his body sometimes during the game, and one day he suddenly bursted into tears in hotel and couldn’t stop all night. After that day, he started to get listed as OUT due to a mysterious injury and never played. That day was when he decided to return to Japan, per him.

i agree with you yoda

Played in the Finals four years before Chris Paul though

Yeah, I instantly thought ankle injuries. And looking it up, yeah around 2013 he was getting 8 injections into his ankles a month. And it wasn’t just ankles, although it was probably all related

Deron used to destroy CP3 head to head lol.

He didn’t have the greatest supporting cast in his first two full seasons there but at some point he had Pierce, Garnett, Kirilenko, Lopez, Iso Joe, Livingston and some solid role players with him. It’s really weird because he was an All Star with NJ the season prior to that blockbuster trade with the Celtics but once he was surrounded with stars, he seemed to get worse each year. I remember him gaining a lot of weight too, dude looked like he was trying to catch up on Raymond Felton shape.

I am convinced this guy was in debt with the mob or something and he had to throw the game

A combination of that, and also they changed how they refereed “verticality” when contesting/blocking shots. Hibbert’s peak years, he was given a lot of grace with regards to contesting shots vertically even as his arms moved into the shooter. They started to call those as fouls more often, and the biggest tool he had to be productive on the floor disappeared. This meant he very quickly had to work much harder on defense as a tall and slow center with limited offensive skill set, right at the time that the pace & space of the league skyrocketed on the backs of the Warriors and things like their Small Ball “Death Lineup”. Hibbert and his lower level of conditioning relative to the rest of the league didn’t stand a chance. 

That foot injury really screwed him up, he was actually the Pacers leading scorer in 2019-20 and was doing a good job of shedding his reputation as being injury prone, bad at 3s, and bad at defense in one year with the Pacers. From what I remember as well, he was actually a bit injured in the Bubble too, but also got pretty exposed by Spo and the Heat.

Then he missed basically two seasons, put on some weight and never got back up to speed.

Fultz lost his shooting ability randomly between the draft and the start of the season. Look how smooth his shot was in college, and how jerky it was game 1.

Cause is still debated, the shoulder impingement, a motocross accident that they tried to cover up because it’d breach his contract (and thus didn’t get top level care for), mental state.

I’m glad my team is competing with itself in this thread.

Ben Simmons almost got worse every season lol, weirdest career path.

Do we know what the injury was now? At the time we definitely didn’t.

We just watched this number 1 pick inexplicably lose the ability to play basketball. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced as a fan of any sport

Apparently half the 76ers doctors and team didnt believe he had TOS syndrome, cause it cant be proven lol

there was a story he was playing videogames in Kentucky when supposed to be rehabbing, Fultzs mom also ran his whole life. He wasnt that mature and not the smartest….im not sure what to believe with the guy

Personally I feel like something really bad happened to him, mentally or emotionally something traumatic because talking heads on ESPN/Fox alluded to how “what he went through they would never wish on anyone” but never elaborated. I feel like its something only insiders would have an idea of but its so bad they dont even feel right for bringing it up.

As someone who with two of them, agreed. Always thought back injuries were minor until I started to deal with disc issues. Never wish this on (just about) anyone.

The punch was one thing, but seeing everyone not siding with Poole and doing more about the situation is a whole other thing imo.

if injuries were the main reason he would still be valued

It wasn’t the moped crash, he was still one of the fastest players in the league on super heavy minutes right around the time he got traded. Dude was still serviceable in 2015 with Dallas and actually led that team in scoring. It was his Pacers tenure that really killed him, he was an undersized SG that couldn’t defend in a defensive-heavy team with Vogel and couldn’t run or shoot at all by his last season.

Monta was still good after the moped crash. He was in the perfect situation on the Warriors before Baron Davis left, Nelson went crazy, they signed Bad Porn, he was asked to change his style of play, and the entire team imploded.

Monta’s 2007-08 season is still so underrated. 20ppg on 53.1% shooting (!) despite barely shooting threes. He was a demon

Monta have it all