Brick by Brick: Paul George (Part 1)

Resume

• 3rd in MVP (2019)
• 1x First Team (2019)
• 5x Third Team (’13, ’14, ’16, ’18, ‘21)
• 2x All-Defensive First Team
• 2x All-Defensive Second Team
• Most Improved Player (2013)

If you didn’t know already, I am a definitive Paul George stan. A controversial figure, I’ll put it plainly early that I think he is generally underrated by most people. Yet like a James Harden, there is plenty of evidence for his detractors to refer to. Let’s go (generally) year by year to see where PG has fallen short.

Year by Year Overview

• Age 20: 2010–11 (Pacers) — Lost East Conf 1st Rnd
• Age 21: 2011–12 — Lost East Conf Semis
• Age 22: 2012–13 *— Lost ECF (to Heat)
• Age 23: 2013–14 *— Lost ECF (to Heat)
• Age 24: 2014–15 — injured
• Age 25: 2015–16* — Lost EC 1st Rd (to Raps)
• Age 26: 2016–17* — Lost East Conf 1st Rnd (to Cavs)
• Age 27: 2017–18* (OKC) — Lost West Conf 1st Rnd (to Jazz)
• Age 28: 2018–19 *— Lost West Conf 1st Rnd (to Blazers)
• Age 29: 2019–20 (Clippers) — Lost West Conf Semis (to Nuggets)
• Age 30: 2020–21* — Lost West Conf Finals (to Suns)
• Age 31: 2021–22 — lost play-in
• Age 32–2022–23 —
• *All-Star years

The Pacers era

Paul George was drafted 10th overall in the 2010 NBA Draft, out of Fresno State. He made All-Rookie Second Team, where he averaged a paltry 8 points on a middling Pacers team that finished 8th in the conference.

His sophomore season showed slight improvements. I am not at liberty to speak to what flashes PG showed early on, as I was not watching a lot of 40-win Pacers teams at the time. There were likely people who projected a leap.

Although I still wasn’t fully invested in basketball like I am now in the early-2010 era, I do remember PG’s 3rd season (2012–13) as a big deal in the NBA community. After averaging 12 PPG, George jumped up to 17 PPG, along with a Second-Team All D nod, and a Third Team All-NBA. There aren’t a ton of leaps that big. The Pacers finished third in the Eastern Conference behind the 66-win Miami Heat, and the Melo/Chandler Knicks. The Pacers went on to upset the Knicks in 6 games in the second round.

Now, the ECF is what I think has been lost to time. The 2012–13 Heat were a historic team, with LeBron at the peak of his 2-way powers. They had their 27-game win streak amidst their 66 total wins. As we know, the Heat went on to win the series and the Finals (with a much needed Ray Allen in the mix somewhere). Here are the game by game numbers.

Now, we can see that Game 7 ended as a walkover. I don’t remember how close all the games are, or if people thought the Heat were still coasting a little bit — as we have seen LeBron be want to do, even in the early rounds of playoffs. Not all game sevens are created equal. Still, for a team led by Paul George and Roy Hibbert to come that close, is a huge deal.

In 2013–14, PG kept up his pace, leading the Pacers to 56 wins and the 1-seed in the conference. Hibbert made the All-Star team for the Pacers, showing excellent defensive chops. The Heat were a collapsing star, with Wade and Bosh showing major regression, and talks of LeBron leaving clouding much of the season.

The long and short of it is that as the Heat were primed to jumpstart smallball with Bosh and LeBron as the frontcourt, and Hibbert was their first major victim. It showed the beginning of the end for him and big men like him, and he was out of the league about 3 years later. George averaged 24 PPG, but it wasn’t enough, and the Heat won in six games, before their rematch of the Finals versus the vengeful Spurs.

After two fantastic seasons, George confirms his spot right along the premier under-25 guys in the league — with Griffin, Davis, Love, and Wall. It sounds less impressive now, but that is no small praise. I think we all know what happens next. George brakes his leg in two places at the USA FIBA camp in the summer, and misses the entire 2014–15 season. There were real talks of his career being finished.

After missing all of 2014–15 (the Warriors first championship season) George did surprise everybody, and come back strong, impressively making Third Team All-NBA, and the Pacers finished 7th in the East. Raptors fans will famously remember the First Round series.

The Raps won, thanks in part due to a Game 5 Raps comeback capped off by a Norm Powell dunk. Underdiscussed was the decision by Frank Vogel who decided to leave George out of the game until around 6 minutes left in the fourth, after the Raptors comeback had already taken place. He stil scored 39 points. If he doesn’t sit, the Pacers probably win Game 5 and go up 3–2. Who knows if they win. Toronto had major demons to exercise, and I’m confident saying that if they lost to the Pacers as a 2-seed, the team would have been blown up. Basketball can boil down to ‘who has the best player in the series. What I can say as a fan of the Raps — we all knew who was the best, and PG proved the adage right in the series. It took everything the Raps had to hold him off.

After two more seventh place finishes in the East in 2016 and 2017, the Paul George Pacers era felt over, and he was traded in July 2017 to OKC.

I swing both ways with the Pacers teams that made the conference finals. They were a fairly egalitarian team, as seen above with a wide mix of scoring. Hibbert was a fantastic defensive stopper, raising their floor immensely. Hill and Stephenson helped with playmaking, but you can see by the rest of the roster, that there isn’t a ton of depth. It was George that took them over the top, from a good regular season team with a high floor, into a team with enough juice to get into the upper-echelon of the (albeit weak) conference.

2013–14 Regular season stats

Now, with this argument is the real conversation about the Bulls. As we know, Derrick Rose never recovered after his knee injuries following his 2011 MVP campaign. I think it’s a real argument that they were the other true Finals contender next to the Heat (regardless of if you think they could’ve beat them). Unfortunately we never saw the Bulls play either the Pacers or Heat at full strength. It’s tough for me to say if the Pacers were a worthy Finals team, but I do think they qualify as a worthy conference final team. They don’t belong in the category of the 2021 Hawks, or 2019 Blazers who made the Conference Finals due to multiple funky circumstances.

Thunder era

The OKC era is certainly a bizarre one to consider when contextualizing Paul George. In my opinion, he is a great 1B on a good team. Theoretically, that would work well next to a ball dominant player in Russell Westbrook.

It’s not that Paul George didn’t work in OKC. The Thunder finished with 48 wins (4th place) in 2017–18, and 49 wins (6th place) in 2018–19, on the back of PG’s MVP-level season. In good conferences, 48 wins is nothing to scoff at. The Thunder ended up losing to the Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. A tough one. The Jazz were semi-rebuilding, and everyone kept waiting for Donovan Mitchell to go cold. Turns out that’s just who he was. The Jazz were decent. But on paper, having two stars should’ve done more for OKC. Who’s to say whose fault it was. Was PG disappointing? Does his injury excuse anything? Are we already blaming Westbrook for being so meh? You decide for yourself. Here was OKC’s regular season roster.

The rest of the team was lackluster as well. Think about even the information we have now with the math of 3-point shooting — how was this team ever going to outplay jumpshooting teams?And a well-coached, sound, Jazz team at that. Makes a little more sense, but I don’t think it’s great.

I don’t think it’s gets better either, when you fast forward to next season, and the Thunder lose 4–2 to the Blazers off the iconic Dame stepback over PG. The Blazers were a very good team that year, finishing 53–29, with a 4.43 SRS. But hypothetically, the Thunder weren’t far behind. They finished 49–33, with a surprisingly solid SRS of 3.56. The Blazer took care of business, winning the series 4–1, with Dame clearly being the best player. This is more disappointing to me given George’s MVP season. It’s hard to know how much is on him without rewatching the games. He averaged 28 PPG. His 3-point shooting was down — 32% for the series — which is nothing crazy in small samples. He averaged around 10 FTA per game. Dame shot the lights out — 48% on 10 3PA per game, with 62% true shooting, an offensive rating of 118, averaging 33 PPG. And closing it out on the stepback. Impressive stuff. The Blazers went on to the conference finals, proving they were a worthy first round opponent in my mind.

His MVP-type season with OKC isunimpeachable to me. There are multiple MVP-level seasons every year. Only one person can win (somebody explain this to Joel Embiid). I do think PG should have finished 3rd, behind unbelievable Giannis and Harden seasons

.Again, it’s hard to calibrate these two years. 15 years prior, two “superstars” probably would have been enough to qualify in a contending category, even with a so-so roster. By 2015, the league went to another level. Is that PG’s fault? Or does it just add to his legacy of “never quite good enough”.

Clippers era

How do you talk about these Clippers? There’s been a combination of bad play, and injuries, which make the two sides — critics and defendants both wrong and right at the same time. Again, here are the results:

• Age 29: 2019–20 — Lost West Conf Semis (to Nuggets)
• Age 30: 2020–21* — Lost West Conf Finals (to Suns)
• Age 31: 2021–22 — lost play-in (to Pelicans)

The 2020 Nuggets series in the bubble is brutal. No other way to put it. The Clips were clearly the better team. They were up 3–1, and threw it away. PG has both the infmaous backboard shot AND “Pandemic P” nickname to unfortunately epitomize the series. I think Kawhi deserves more blame than he got as well. That sorta stuff shouldn’t happen to the same player who did what he did for the Raptors. I will say, the bubble clearly gave way to more variance, and I think the Clips and George deserve a little less criticism than what they’ve been given. Many teams were bad the entire time. It’s just the expectations and excitement for the Clips was so high, and rightfully so.

The 2020–21 Clips are almost equally tough to discuss. They went 47–25 — a 54 win pace — with the second best SRS rating in the league (6.02). Kawhi made First Team All-NBA, and PG made Third. They took care of business in a dogfight first round matchup versus Luka Doncic and the Mavs. Then they had a hardfought win over the Western Conference champ Utah Jazz in 6 games, closing out in Utah. Kawhi sprained his right knee at the end of Game 4, and missed the final two games. George, Reggie Jackson, and the rest of the team played incredibly. People left the series blaming the Jazz and Gobert for being a fraudulent contender, without giving enough credit to the Clips for fighting back. They were written off after Kawhi was injured, and survived.

Thus, the Clips broke the conference finals curse, and faced the relentless Suns. They played what I deem to be a very respectable six game series, with PG staving off elimination in Game 5 with a historically good game — where he scored 41pts, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steal, on 15–20 shooting. It is just one game, but it feels like this still isn’t talked about enough. To me, PG was always considered a big game player, and the Pandemic P label stuck so hard, it somehow managed to overtake all that good will. It’s not his fault, or anyone on the Clips, that they lost to such a good Suns team. To even make it to 6 games, is a sign of resilience.

It’s almost hard to remember what happened to the Clippers last year, as they were such an afterthought. George played 31 games with shoulder injuries nagging him. Kawhi played zero, due to his ACL injury. The Clips finished in 8th technically, losing the play-in to the Pelicans. George didn’t even play, due to health and safety protocols. It doesn’t really matter. It would have been fun to have a rematch versus the rolling Suns, but the frisky Pelicans gave us a fun series instead.

At a certain point, the results have to be played. You can blame wonkiness, injuries, a pandemic, and many other factors for the Clips shortcomings. Three seasons isn’t a lot, but they have also fallen short. Many teams need lots of bites at the apple. Assuming the Clippers stay healthy, this has to be their year. Unless they lose a great series in a valiant effort versus the Warriors or another team in the Western Conference Finals, it’ll be hard to run it back. One conference finals in 4 years is simply not enough. They have the roster, but haven’t fully shown it yet. I’m still weary of their ballhandling, and Norm Powell possibly being their third best player.

Either way, Paul George needs to show out. Even though there is plenty of time with him left, and plenty of caveats or asterisks to throw on his career — his fault or not — he didn’t become the player he could have been at age 23. Him and Jimmy Butler are forever intertwined, and firmly in a tier below the all time greats, which is nothing to be ashamed of. In a different era, they’re closer to the top. But Butler’s consistent playoff chops have managed to make PG look even worse. He can’t really afford to have another terrible performance in him. If him and Kawhi can hopefully find some better symbiosis this season, hopefully he can prove how perfect of a second banana he has the ability to be.

More thoughts to come, as well as our final ranking of PG, in Part 2.