Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert has been flattening the competition in the paint during the Eastern Conference finals against the Miami Heat. During the playoffs, Hibbert has averaged 16.2 points and 10.2 rebounds. In the conference finals, those numbers have jumped to 22.8 points and 12.0 rebounds with his field-goal percentage rising from 49.5 percent to 54.1 percent. Hibbert is taking the small lineups of the Heat and feasting on them.
With this emergence by Hibbert, some people may have started to wonder if he's the best center in the NBA. He would have to leap (figuratively) over guys like Brook Lopez, Joakim Noah, Marc Gasol, Tim Duncan and Dwight Howard just to name a few centers that some might feel are better than the Pacers' big man. Don't count ex-Magic coach Stan Van Gundy as one of the believers that Hibbert could be emerging as the best center in basketball. Via the Orlando Sentinel:
"Come on, that one's not close," Van Gundy said during his weekly Thursday segment on our Open Mike morning radio show on 740 AM. "You could put that question to 30 general managers in the league -- and give them the choice -- and Indiana, out of loyalty, might take Hibbert although I would doubt it. The other 29 would not even hesitate. Everybody's taking Dwight.
"I understand ... Roy Hibbert is playing the best basketball of his career right now (against the Heat). You have to understand that Roy Hibbert during the regular season had seven games where he had (at least) 20 points and 10 rebounds and now he has three in this series. So now people are looking at him and saying he's great. He averages 11 points per game in his career and he's not a terrific rebounder although he is an elite-level defender. But on the offensive end of the floor he's never done (what he's doing now) and he's really taking advantage of a very, very small Miami Heat team and a defender in Chris Bosh who right now in the series has just not stepped up into the battle at all."
Maybe I've been hanging around the wrong message boards and comments sections, but I didn't know people were calling Hibbert the best center in basketball with his recent play.
Hibbert has been incredible during this series. He's dominating the paint on both ends and forcing the Heat to adjust to what he's doing. That's something really good players force an opponent to do. But is Stan Van Gundy wrong for thinking 29 or 30 teams in the league would take Dwight Howard over Roy Hibbert?
To say he averages 11 points for his career shouldn't really factor into this discussion. Players start out slowly and Hibbert definitely started out slowly. It would make no sense to use those early years to prove a point about the player he's become. Now, he's a really good center with the ability to score in the post with either hand and defend the rim as good as just about anybody. If you're trying to make a point that Dwight has been great for so long and Hibbert is just starting to become great, that's a valid point.
However, it doesn't have much bearing on the discussion at hand of who might be better now.
With that said, Dwight Howard is the better center when comparing the two, but he has to regain the form he had before his back surgery to make it less of a discussion. As Hibbert has improved, Howard has regressed. His regression is understandable. He had back surgery a year ago and he played with a torn labrum during this season. To expect him to be great during those recovery times would be unrealistic. But he still has to get back to being a dominant force on at least one end of the floor.
Otherwise players like Hibbert, who improve in a such a manner that it garners max contracts and media attention, will continue to start nipping at his heels.
