When the season began George Hill sported a beautiful blonde look, but at the end of January, the Indiana Pacers guard went back to his natural hair color.
The question is, what effect did it have on his game?
In the 39 games George Hill played as a blonde, the Pacers were 21-18. For Hill himself, he averaged 12.8 points a game on 44.3% shooting. From beyond the arc, he was shooting 41.8% and was quietly one of the NBA’s better long-range specialists. He also averaged 4 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.3 blocks while turning it over 1.3 times a game.
It wasn’t exactly Aggressive George Hill™, but he was playing within the Indiana Pacers offense without being passive. The team sported a 102 offensive rating, a 99.3 defensive rating, for a net rating of 2.7.
Then came the birth of George Hill’s son, which spurred him to rid himself of the Sisqo look and go back to his natural hair color.
So how has George Hill played in the 14 games since then?
The Pacers are 7-7 and Hill’s scoring has dropped 11.3 points a game on 39.5% shooting. His 3-point shooting has dropped down to 33.3% while averaging 4.4 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 1.2 steals. Hill also is only turning the ball over once a game since January 30, the day of his style change.
The team’s offensive rating has dropped to 101.2 while the defensive rating has jumped up to 101.4, giving the Pacers a -0.1 net rating.
So other than having slightly better rebounds and assists numbers, Non-blonde George Hill hasn’t been as good of a player as Blonde George Hill.
Sure, you could say that correlation isn’t causation, but the results are clear, and the solution is simple.
George Hill must go blonde again.
Update: My friend Michael Beverage ran the data looking for analysis of variance and found some interesting and significant correlations with the numbers.
"3-pointers made (basically but it’s right on the line) and assists (not even close to being nonsignficant) are the only things that turned out significant, which isn’t too surprising given the small sample. Maybe players are better able to find passing lanes since he’s easier to see with blonde hair.I got slightly different means for FG% and points, and honestly these would be significant with a larger sample size. I know this doesn’t mean causation but you should clearly conclude and write that the hair color is the reason."
As you can see folks, the blonde hair is the reason he made more 3-pointers and why he had more assists. His teammates had no trouble finding him both to set him up for 3-pointers and looking for him when they received assists.
Next: Myles Turner Still Has Plenty To Learn On Defense
Numbers don’t lie.