Paul George Is Everything Indiana Needs
It’s happening. The Indiana Pacers are officially testing the trade market for 4-time all-star forward Paul George, per Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.
Hit the panic button. Sound the alarms. Buckle up for the longest 16 hours in franchise history.
How did we get here? 5 days ago, Larry Bird and company were on the record stating that the Pacers are refuting all trade offers for Paul George. Now Bird wants to turn him into a memory? Are you serious? Does he remember what life was like from November 2004 to the start of the 2010 NBA season? I do. All Pacers fans do.
Allow me paint a picture for you. It’s a mild November night in 2004. The Pacers are at the Palace of Auburn Hills playing the defending champions, Detroit Pistons. Late to go in the 4th quarter, the player formerly known as Ron Artest nails Ben Wallace with a hard foul. Wallace, resident tough guy in Detroit, takes offense to foul and shoves Artest in retaliation. Both benches clear as the teams are trying their best to keep Artest and Wallace from getting into a fist fight. Little did they know the players were the least of their concerns. Artest decides to calm down by laying down on the scores table (because, you know, thats what NBA players do when there’s a fight taking place). No more than 30 seconds pass when a bold Detroit fan hurls a beer right at Artest. In a split second, he leaps over the scorers table, hurdles 10 rows of seats and is attacking Pistons fans. All hell breaks loose. The NBA suspended 5 Pacers players after the brawl. And just like that, the Indiana Pacers slip from perennial contender to a hotbed for mediocrity for half a decade.
Fans struggled through the years of watching Sarunas Jasikevicius, Troy Murphy, and Mike Dunleavy playing just poorly enough to miss the playoffs but not quite bad enough to score a high lottery pick. If there is such thing as a basketball purgatory, I imagine it likely resembles the mid-late 2000’s Pacers teams. (I should go ahead and thank Danny Granger for being the only redeeming quality for Pacer fans throughout those years. You rock DG33).
The 2010 NBA season was the first time in a long time that it was actually fun to be a Pacers fan. Larry Bird dumped head coach Jim O’Brien half way through the season and promoted Frank Vogel to the leading role. It was Vogel who made the executive decision to play the lanky kid from Fresno State at starting 2 guard and guess what? THE PACERS ACTUALLY WERE GOOD AGAIN! Well, not instantaneously but the squad played well enough to crack the 2011 playoffs. The redeem team eventually lost in 5 games to the Chicago Bulls and then MVP Derrick Rose (time is funny and basketball is weird sometimes. lol DRose). But the Pacers showed promise and Rookie Paul George was turning heads as a lock down defender.
The Pacers were good again. More importantly, they were fun to watch again. By 2013, Paul George was the best player on a supremely talented team. He led the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals against LeBron James and the Miami Heat. This series would turn out to be a defining moment in PG’s career. George shocked the basketball world when he hit a 25 foot 3 pointer in Miami to send game 1 into OT.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? At this point in his career, Paul George is considered a solid young player. Just look at the gaul of this shot. George rises up from ECF logo and drills a game tying three right in LeBron’s mug. It was awesome. It’s still awesome to this day. PG was a hero and emerging as a superstar in the NBA. That Pacers team came within 48 minutes of the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance since 2000. Paul George was about to become a household name in a league with very few superstars.
The 2013–14 season started off with a 9 game win streak and the Pacers were way out in front of the pack. Paul George was by far the best player on a team with the best record in the NBA. Indiana was thinking championship. Paul George was thinking championship. Larry Bird was thinking championship… and inevitably that was the problem. Bird traded away one-time franchise player in Danny Granger for Evan Turner (stupid). He signed injury plagued center Andrew Bynum to the roster (also stupid). The team with the best record in the league and unrivaled chemistry at the time underwent a massive facelift in the middle of the season because Bird decided they weren’t good enough to win a championship as is. That’s fine. It’s his job to make these decisions and it’s our jobs as fans to roll with the punches. But in reality the moves backfired in a major way. Evan Turner didn’t get along with his new teammates. Roy Hibbert couldn’t deal with Andrew Bynum potentially taking his minutes. And the team imploded as they started the playoffs. It took 7 games to fend off the 8th seeded Atlanta Hawks in the first round. It took another 6 games to beat Washington in the semi-finals before facing off with Miami again in the conference finals. As fans, we could only grin and bear it as we watched our beloved Pacers struggle so mightily against Miami. It sucked. But fans still had hope because the Pacers still had Paul George. Then in the summer of 2014, it all went away in a snap.
I can’t begin to explain the pain I felt as a Pacers fan when PG broke his leg. It’s selfish for me to suggest that my feelings as a fan outweigh Paul’s pain in the moment. My heart sunk. Pacers twitter was grieving. No one knew what would come of George’s career but what we did know was the pain we all felt for Paul was very real. At that time, Pacer fans looked at Paul George as a gift from God himself. PG was everything Indiana could ask for in a star. He’s a guy who wanted to be in Indiana. A guy who wasn’t scared of challenging the giants of the NBA. George’s game was improving exponentially and Pacers fans thought without a doubt he’d lead Indiana to the promised land. The injury put all this in jeopardy.
Something Hoosiers love is a good underdog story. We loved Reggie Miller battling the Knicks in the 90s. We loved Peyton Manning taking down Tom Brady’s Patriots en route to an NFL championship in 2006. We loved when Butler University’s mens basketball team made 2 improbable runs to back-to-back national championship games in 2010 and 2011. And we loved when Paul George strutted on to the court in April of 2015 to return to action for the Pacers less than a year removed from his leg injury. It was a feel good moment for anyone who loves basketball...or anyone with a heart. The icing on the cake was watching Paul hit his very first shot of the game and bark at the officials for a foul. PG-13 was back and Indiana welcomed him with open arms.
Fast forward to present day and PG is allegedly on the trading block. Why? Why is Larry Bird doing this to Paul, his teammates, the fans? Pacers fans have been very forgiving when looking at Bird’s underwhelming free agent signings (Monta Ellis anyone?) and inability to make significant trades because of his above average draft record. But this change of heart is hard to overlook. In 2013, I recruited Pacers’ play-by-play commentator Mark Boyle to speak at my school. Boyle made a bold assertion, “Paul George has a chance to go down as the greatest player ever to wear the blue and gold.” Boyle’s right. George is the most talented all around player Indiana has ever seen. Reggie Miller will forever be the best Pacer of all time but Paul George is by far the most talented. So can we please keep him around? Without George, the Pacers are sure to endure a long and strenous rebuilding process. We need Paul George. To quote The Dark Knight, Paul George isn’t the hero Indiana deserves but the one Indiana needs right now. Why is the front office so eager to give up on him? I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers but I have a very bad feeling that the Paul George era is coming to a very abrupt end.
