It’s a bad sign when a perennial playoff underachiever — and another without much playoff pedigree (see: Arenas, Gilbert, above) — takes shots at you on social media. However, in the case of Roy Hibbert, the criticisms and disses are most certainly warranted, as he delivered another playoff no-show in Game 1 against the Washington Wizards: 18 minutes, 0 points, o rebounds, 5 fouls. In fact, the only positive contribution Hibbert made (if it can be considered as such) was one measly assist in the 102-96 loss — a game that wasn’t even that close (it feels like we’ve been saying that a lot about the Pacers recently). Hibbert’s performance inspired the recently retired Tracy McGrady to take a shot at the Pacers’ big man.
Me and Roy Hibbert had the same amount of points and rebounds tonight.
— Tracy McGrady (@Real_T_Mac) May 6, 2014
The Game 1 loss is the second consecutive Game 1 loss of the postseason for the Pacers, and things may only get worse, as the Wizards are almost certainly better than the Atlanta Hawks, who were content to jack up an NBA record number of threes that finally spelled their doom. The Wizards feature better interior play between Nene and Marcin Gortat (and, apparently, a revived Drew Gooden, who posted 12 points and 13 rebounds in the same number of minutes as Hibbert), while the super-athletic back court of John Wall and Bradley Beal is a more dangerous combination than Jeff Teague and Kyle Korver.
Hibbert can take solace in the fact he’s at least contributed on playoff teams in the past that have made the second round and beyond — something McGrady never did — but something tells us we’ll be seeing a lot more of this over the next week:
