An Investigation: Where Did The Term “Aggressive George Hill” Come From?

The term “Aggressive George Hill” was a favorite of the Indiana Pacers fanbase, but where exactly did it come from?

Last year we saw peak Aggressive George Hill™ and Indiana Pacers fans are hoping to see him return to spark the offense for the 2015-16 campaign.

A few years ago the idea and the phrase “Aggressive George Hill” began to appear in writing and on Twitter, but tracking down the exact origin isn’t easy.

The idea of a more aggressive George Hill began to emerge as Lance Stephenson’s career began to blossom thanks to the fact Stephenson is his most effective controlling the play with a ball-dominant style.

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Hill had been more of a hybrid guard though his career, somewhere firmly between a point guard and shooting guard. He’s been effective in the role, but with Stephenson we saw Hill’s usage rate dip down to 14.8% while he stood around the arc waiting for the ball. In that 2013-14 season he shot a career high 42.2% of his shots from 3-point range while his shots from 0-3 feet also dropped down to 18.3%, nearly a whole two percent below his average as a Pacer. It was during this time people started to long for a more aggressive George Hill.

One of the first articles addressing this came in February of 2013 from Pacers.com’s Mark Montieth.

"“My first four years in the NBA, I was always in the paint, trying to be a slasher, but a lot of teams started taking that away and making me shoot the three,” he said. “Sometimes you have to take what the defense gives you.“I pass up a lot of shots where my teammates yell at me that I have to shoot that. Coming from San Antonio, it’s a pass-first team. You always try to make the extra pass for your teammates, so I have to get out of that a little bit and be more aggressive.”Hill doesn’t have a well-defined game. He’s good in all areas, and great or weak in no areas. But that seems appropriate for this team, in which defenses are to be read and the ball is to be shared. It wouldn’t matter anyway. He’s stuck with his job. At 6-foot-2, his length is adequate to defend most point guards, but not to defend most shooting guards, so his only choice is to accept his lucrative fate and grow with it.“I’m going to continue to get better,” he said. “(Assistant coach Brian) Shaw is working with me on different reads and how to be a point guard leader. I’m going to take one step at a time and hopefully by the time my career is over, I’ll be one heck of a point guard.”"

The idea began to take root and we began to see the evolution of both George Hill and this nickname.

On May 7, 2013, during the Indiana Pacers’ Game 2 loss to the New York Knicks, we find the phrase “aggressive George Hill” used on Twitter for the first time.

A week later and again against the Knicks, though it may have been just proper capitalization, we saw “Aggressive George Hill” on Twitter for the first time.

Either way the 2013 playoffs began to establish the idea of Aggressive George Hill™ as Indiana pushed the Miami Heat to a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference finals.

It was the following season the capitalized phrase “Aggressive George Hill” began to appear on Twitter and not just at the beginning of sentences.

Last season he lived up to the name but the question going into this season will still be if he can continue to be Aggressive George Hill™ while sharing the floor with Monta Ellis and a healthy Paul George. That will take away his number of touches but that doesn’t mean he can’t make the most of each one he gets.

Next: Which Pacers Made SI’s Top 100 NBA Players List?

Footnote: While we didn’t see the phrase “aggressive George Hill” until 2013, Till Odinson deserves a little credit for being the first person on Twitter to use all three words in a tweet in 2010 when Hill was with the San Antonio Spurs.