Well it only took nine games, but Roy Hibbert finally didn’t suck last night. He responded to the Paul George banging his wife rumors and his woefully impressive zero point, zero rebound effort in game one by going off for a season high 28 points and 9 boards. Paul George didn’t fare as well last night, but he did score a huge bucket by slashing down the lane for an emphatic dunk late in the fourth quarter. A few minutes later Lance Stephenson, another Pacer having an off-night, drilled a jumper to ice the game. That’s the team basketball we saw from Indiana in the first half of the regular season that has disappeared lately.
What about David West though? He only had nine points. PLUS someone sent me an email saying Ian Mahinmi was tappin his girl, what do internets?
On a serious note, the Wizards are giving Indiana all they can handle. They won game one, and were neck ‘n neck with the Pacers all game long last night. Furthermore, as we said in our preview, Marcin Gortat has been beating Hibbert up on the other end. Last night he did so to the tune of 21 points and 11 bounds. If Gortat keeps mauling Hibbert the Pacer center is going to have to score like he did last night just to even things out. Even with last nights scoring binge, Hibbert is still averaging 7 points per game in the playoffs.
The deciding factor last night was free throws. The Pacers were 18/21 while Washington only hit on 5-of-12. Gortat only got to the line once and was 1-for-2 while Hibbert went 8-for-8. Take those extra free throws away as the referees most likely will over the next two games in DC and Indiana is being matched stride for stride by the Wiz.
John Wall was abysmal last night hitting only 2 shots on 13 attempts. This should come as no surprise as we saw in our preview that George Hill shut him down better than most defenders in their regular season match-ups. He missed two big shots late in the game, but the killer was with about 1:15 left – the Wizards came down on a fast break after Hibbert fell down trying to grab a rebound. Despite clearly having an easy two-on-one bucket down low, Wall elects not to push the ball to the rack for a sure deuce, stops and settles for a three to try and tie, clang, game.
This series seems like it’s going to come down to which team shits the bed the worst. The main question going into game 3 is who will be worse Wall or Hibbert? None of this really matters though. If you listen real close you can actually hear LeBron licking his chops.
Article By: Anthony Schiano
