Roy Hibbert Has Perfect Chance to Salvage Career with Los Angeles Lakers

Ups, downs and everything in between. Roy Hibbert has been there during his seven-year career with the Indiana Pacers. With just one year remaining on his contract, there's hope he can reestablish himself as one of the league's premier centers.

Hibbert's ability to defend played a central role in the Los Angeles Lakers' decision to acquire the 7'2" rim protector via trade from the Pacers earlier this month.

General manager Mitch Kupchak clearly understood what the rest of the world has known for some time. His team isn't going anywhere without a significant reversal of fortune on the defensive end, and Hibbert could help. 

The Lakers introduced the 28-year-old on Wednesday, and he said he's already prepared to make a difference where it's most needed, per Lakers.com's Joey Ramirez:

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Looking at the team here, they have a lot of firepower. ... My main presence is going to be at the rim. Last year the Lakers were (29th) in defensive efficiency. So my job is to make sure I clog up the paint, (provide) help-side defense, and whatever else I get on the offensive end is candy. My main presence is going to be on defense to make sure these guys know I have their backs.

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No ambiguity there. It's a simple job description, perhaps even a weight off Hibbert's offensively limited shoulders. And it's what one would expect from a big who's averaged 1.9 blocks per contest for his career.

Hibbert has remained an impactful defender even as his offense sputtered out over the last few years. He ranked fifth in defensive win shares in 2012-13 (4.9) and 2013-14 (5.0), according to Basketball-Reference.com. His defensive box plus/minus also ranked fifth (3.8) and eleventh (3.3), respectively, in those campaigns. Hibbert has ranked in the top 11 in block percentage all seven years of his career, and came in 11th last season at 5.1 percent).

More conventional metrics aren't kind to Hibbert. He's an incomplete scorer (particularly from the mid-range) and an average rebounder (though he has ranked highly in offensive rebounding). For a guy with great size and good hands, one would expect a bit more—certainly better than the last three seasons' sub-45 percent shooting.

At minimum, however, he's a sometimes-elite interior defender with all kinds of ability to deter penetration and alter shots. For a team that allowed 108 points per 100 possessions last season, according to Hollinger Team Stats, that kind of presence could be instrumental in changing L.A.'s fate. We know this team can score (all the more so with a healthy Kobe Bryant and the recently signed Lou Williams), but all the offense in the world won't matter without a quality backstop.

Others will have to do their parts on the perimeter, but Hibbert offers defensive insurance in the painted area—especially so if his new physique translates into a more mobile and energetic disposition.

"It all can't fall on [Hibbert’s] plate," Kupchak said at the introductory press conference, per Ramirez. “If you're on the perimeter, you just can't let your guy get past you and say, 'Oh, Roy's back there.' It doesn’t work that way.

"Everybody's gonna have to buy in defensively and make a commitment defensively. But it's nice to know that if something breaks down, there is somebody back there that can protect the rim and the paint."

The other, and far less certain, dimension of Hibbert's game is his offense. It's a mixed bag. He's capable of delivering baby hooks in the lane and is competent enough with his back to the basket. His touch has shown promise, perhaps building expectations that a full scoring repertoire would emerge at some point. Until now, that hasn't really happened. If anything, the big man's assertiveness and efficiency have declined of late.

That could change in L.A. Expectations for offense will be appropriately low, but Hibbert's already in touch with the right people as he looks to improve his game.

"Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] reaches out to me," Hibbert said, per Ramirez. "He comes to watch my workouts, and we stay in touch for the most part. He gives me little tidbits. I worked with him a lot last year. He keeps up with me, so he always gives me some advice, something to work on."

That's a start. The other good news is that Hibbert may be utilized a bit differently in the Lakers' new motion-based system. Forbes' Josh Benjamin recently argued that the transition could be beneficial:

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Under Scott, the Lakers are running the Princeton offense, the purpose of which is to create mismatches and scoring opportunities through constant ball movement. In such a system, which the Lakers actually ran under coach Mike Brown for one-plus seasons before he was fired after a slow start and replaced with the run-and-gun happy Mike D’Antoni, the center actually plays quite a big role. 

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With the offense coming to him around the basket, Hibbert could emerge a reasonably effective complementary scorer. No one would complain. But getting buckets won't be his primary task, and those per-game numbers probably won't stand out.

As NBA TV's Dennis Scott put it (per the Indianapolis Star's Candace Buckner), "Roy will play until he gets tired because it's hard to find 7-foot guys who know how to play. He's just not a guy that you say to yourself [he's] David Robinson, Shaq, Patrick [Ewing] and all those great centers. That's just not Roy.

"So why try to force something on somebody and that's just not who he is?"

The Lakers don't need Hibbert to be a star, not an entirely well-rounded one anyway. They need him to be a better, faster, stronger version of himself, a defensive wrecking ball covering space and capitalizing on his length on the defensive end.

Facing free agency in 2016, Hibbert has all the incentive in the world to get in shape. There will be plenty of eyes on him in L.A., and they just might like what they see.