Pacers can't let big Roy walk

First appeared on July 10th,2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

It’s the unexpected that keeps us moving forward. Most can forecast the mundane with greater accuracy than an AMS certified weatherman. Things like bills, bad reports from the dentist or the fact your yard will at some point need to be mowed again are all the harsh realities of life; but it’s those little nuggets of the unexpected that keep us on our toes.

Things like a co-worker’s comment that digs at you for days or the moment the Bachelorette gets interrupted by a Special Report just as she’s about to tell a fourth different guy she loves him or worse yet how about the Pacers finding out their biggest worry this off season won’t be bolstering their bench after all.

After completing his fourth season Pacers big man Roy Hibbert is a Restricted Free Agent. Many believed Hibbert would attract interest but nothing that would possibly lead him to google “Indianapolis area U-Haul dealers”. But a max deal from Portland has completely muddied the waters and now Hibberts future has never been more uncertain.

The first sign of trouble for the Pacers Brass was likely Hibbert’s selection to the All Star Team this past season. While they beamed for the press and slapped big Roy on the back during the announcement, what the photographs failed to show were the wheels that were already spinning in their minds. The math is easy to do even for those of us who loathe it.

All Stars command more money. And not only is Roy an All Star but he’s also one who works hard on his game and goes out of his way be a positive force in the community. From here the answer is simple. Sign Hibbert. Of course it’s far more complex than that.

There are factors at play here that a team of MIT Scientists and doctoral level economists can’t even put into terms simple enough to keep us from reacting like a monkey that’s just been handed processed banana chips in a vacuum sealed bag.
In this case the unexpected is painfully clear however.

Indiana needs to do whatever it takes to keep Hibbert in a Pacer uniform. And ‘whatever it takes’ means there appear to be many options the talking heads have overlooked. Hijacking a Brinks truck and setting up a counterfeiting ring in the basement of Bankers Life Fieldhouse are just two illegal methods that leap to mind. If public relations weren’t an issue the Pacers suits could go downtown and sit at the corner of Illinois and Maryland with a cup and cardboard sign reading “Keep Roy”. Lottery tickets, putting $10 million on Red and an Area 55 IPO are some of the more risky options for quick cash as well.

If you can work your way past the depressing (for us, not Roy) numbers and confusing semantics of the salary cap and focus simply on basketball in its purest form (yes I understand how laughable it is to include the NBA and pure basketball in the same thought) Hibbert makes Indiana better. He’s not a 30 and 10 guy, but the list of things he does to help Indiana win games is quite lengthy.

Losing Hibbert would be a setback the Pacers would spend 3-4 years recovering from. And by that point the young promising team they’ve assembled will be a decent yet aging team making perennial trips to the first round of the playoffs and staying just long enough to dip a toe in. And if this is what actually comes of this young core, the Pacers suits will find themselves on Illinois and Maryland anyway.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams