Just last week, my colleague Ben Heller made an impassioned plea to unleash Jordan Hill. The argument thus far against playing Hill has been his defensive inabilities and mental lapses. Is he really that bad? Using the synergy sports database, I decided to look a little closer into the numbers.
Thus far this season, Jordan Hill’s man is scoring 37% of the time. For comparison, Luis Scola’s man scores on 44% of his attempts. Overall, Hill’s opponents are shooting 33% from the floor on field goals taken against him; Scola’s are shooting 44%.
When posting up, Hill’s opponents are shooting 18% from the floor and scoring on only 20% of their tries. When posting up on Scola, opponents are shooting 33% and scoring on 32% of the attempts.
Finally, when spotting up, opponents are shooting 46% from the floor against Hill and scoring on 50% of the attempts. But against Scola, they’re shooting 59% and scoring on 58% of the attempts.
Now obviously, as the starter at the ’4′, Luis Scola faces tougher competition. But I wanted to use him as a barometer just to understand roughly how Hill fares.
With this season starting to slip away, I would prefer to see Jordan Hill given a chance to mature. He isn’t much worse defensively than Scola, and while he doesn’t bring the offense, he offsets that with his shotblocking.
