With 12.1 seconds remaining in overtime of their Wednesday visit to the nation's capital to take on the Washington Wizards, the Indiana Pacers prepared to inbound the ball trailing by two points and facing a decision. Would the Pacers try to engineer a good look at a high-percentage 2-pointer to tie things up and extend the game? Or would Indiana — spread obscenely thin due to injuries to Paul George, George Hill, David West, C.J. Watson and Rodney Stuckey, and playing on the second night of a back-to-back after losing to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday — go for the win and live with the consequences?
Head coach Frank Vogel decided to go for the glory. What he got was ... well, something less than glorious:
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Yep, that's 7-foot-2 Pacers center Roy Hibbert — who had made seven 3-pointers in 22 career tries over the span of six-plus seasons and 515 total games in his career prior to Wednesday — popping out to the left wing and firing a potential game-winning 3-pointer with just under three seconds remaining. As you probably would've expected, it didn't go down. Neither did Chris Copeland's attempt at a put-back, and the Wizards escaped with a 96-94 overtime win that improved Washington 4-1 on the season, and dropped Indiana, the team that vanquished the Wiz in the second round of the playoffs back in May, to 1-4.
As it turns out, dear reader, we weren't the only ones surprised by Hibbert raising up for the win. From J. Michael of CSNWashington.com:
"I realized he really got big balls to take that. I mean, I don't know what was the play," Wizards center Marcin Gortat said of watching Hibbert launch the three. "I was really surprised he took that three. I've seen games like that. He doesn't score from the field, even one bucket, and he take a three. I'm just glad he didn't make it."
While Vogel did want the Pacers to wind up with a 3-point try on the play, this wasn't exactly what he had in mind, according to Candace Buckner of the Indianapolis Star:
"Go for the win doesn't mean Roy go for the win," Vogel said, "but you got to play the game. We did say in the timeout that we wanted to go for the win. You got to let your basketball instincts pay off."
The play had a chance. The action was designed for the one 3-point specialist on the court, Chris Copeland [...] Instead, after the screen set by Hibbert, Copeland found himself moving towards the basket when he should have been freed and ready for the pass beyond the arc.
"Not sure what happened there," offered [Indiana point guard Donald] Sloan, who then said he thought he saw Copeland slip then draw a second defender. Neither event happened. [...]
"It's just one of those things, man," Copeland said. "One of those days."
It was most certainly one of those days for Hibbert, who missed all seven of his field-goal attempts in 31 1/2 minutes of play and found himself both on the business end of a turnover and on the deck after Wizards big man Kevin Seraphin pulled the chair on him:
It was Hibbert's first offensive clunker of the season after averaging 15 points on 60 percent shooting through the Pacers' first four contests, and he asserted himself in other areas of the game, snaring nine rebounds, blocking five shots and dishing four assists in the loss. But the oh-fer's what grabs your attention, especially since it's not the first time in recent memory that the former Georgetown star has put up a goose egg against the Wiz and because of the out-of-character and offline finish to another disappointing Pacer loss.
"It was not designed to go to me," Hibbert said after the game, according to Buckner. "It was in the corner of my eye and I saw the ball come to me so I had to shoot it. It's not my forte but we fought hard. [...] I can't wait until everybody gets healthy."
Spoken like someone who, somewhat understandably, would rather not be trying to get his Dirk on in the closing seconds anytime soon.
Video via mike sham. Vine via cjzero.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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