George Hill Is Much Better Than the 101st Best Player in the NBA

George Hill isn’t regarded as one of the NBA’s best point guards, but so far this season he’s making his case to much closer to the top.

When the season began ESPN ranked George Hill the 101st best player in the NBA.

Despite having a strong season after returning from injury, it seemed George Hill would continue to have the label of a weak link in the Indiana Pacers starting lineup.

But that’s bullshit.

I’m not here to claim that George Hill is secretly the league’s best point guard (That’s Stephen Curry.) or the second best (That’s definitely Russell Westbrook or Chris Paul) or even an all-star.

But the idea that he’s not in the top 100 players or in the top 10 of point guards ignores the impact he’s had on the team both last season without Paul George in the lineup and now as he shares the court with PG and Monta Ellis.

For starters, George Hill is shooting 58.3% from the corners on 24 attempts and 42.2% from anywhere beyond the arc.

He’s been shooting well above average from both corners while being slightly below average from above the break. This works out well for the Pacers as it allows Monta Ellis to control the offense more and be closer to himself while George Hill was waited for his opportunities to strike.

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He’s been burying shot after shot from the corners so far this season. However, he’s only attempted two in the past two weeks as he missed three games and has been getting out of the way to make room for the currently on fire Paul George. I imagine when both PG and C.J. Miles slow down, we’ll see George Hill reassert himself.

He’s shooting plenty of 3-pointers, but nearly a quarter of his shots are coming at the rim as well. He’s playing some the best MoreyBall on the Pacers as he’s still playing the Aggressive George Hill™ brand of basketball he displayed last season.

His 14 points a game aren’t overly impressive, but that ignores his defensive contributions.

You could look at his PER (13.73, ranked 160th) and say that he’s not even that good. But that would be ignoring the fact PER doesn’t account for defensive impact in any meaningful way. It doesn’t help looking at any of the other advanced stats on the page as value added and estimated wins added tie into PER. John Hollinger admitted as much when he developed the metrics.

It might be a little bit more fair to look at something like box adjusted plus/minus, which Basketball-Reference.com defines as a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions that a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team. Once you filter out players who have played less than 200 minutes this season, George Hill ranks 63st in the league with a 2.5, but for perspective Stephen Curry has 12.9 and Russell Westbrook has a 12.1 BPM. He still has ranks 11th best for guards who have played at least 300 minutes this season, but again, he’s missed three games and the Pacers have been in a different rhythm since his return.

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I think seeing how he ranks in BPM gives a better perspective on how he should be regarded in the NBA. He’s not the 101st best player, nor is he in the top 10. But I think it makes much more sense to place him in the top 75 or even top 50 players when you look at the impact he has on the Pacers and has on every game he plays in.

In more palpable ways, he’s been leading the charge in steals along with Paul George and Monta Ellis, as they all average around 1.5 steals a game and as a team the Pacers are 3rd in the league with 9.6 a game.

Hill’s 6’9 wingspan helps him close down passing lanes and is also part of the reason Indiana is a top 5 team when it comes to defending against 3-pointers.

Maybe when Jeff Teague, John Wall, and Derrick Rose improve their numbers this season we can bump George Hill out of the top 10 point guards. But right now if we’re just looking at the impact he has on the court, he’s one of the better options in the league.

George Hill’s style of being somewhere in between a point guard and a shooting guard has always put him in a harder to define place for most fans. It is easy to only evaluate him as either a point guard or a shooting guard, but he’s always been something different. His role the past few seasons have fluctuated, but it would be hard to say the Indiana Pacers are a better team with him off the floor.

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We can debate exactly how good he is, but so far this season he’s proved he’s much better than the 101st best player in the NBA.