I Think I Might Love Paul George Actually
It's been a whirlwind first few months between PG and AU.
I really thought I was gonna dislike Paul George as a Sixer. I did at first, for a minute.
I hadn't wanted him in the offseason, even though I knew that landing him in free agency was probably the safest, smartest move the team could in theory pull off, and that we'd be lucky if they were actually able to. But I still tried to talk myself into trading for Kevin Durant instead, or for Jimmy Butler (again), or for Brandon Ingram. I just knew that PG wasn't going to be The Guy for this team, that certain things about him were going to absolutely drive us insane, that he already wasn't going to be as good as he had been in the past and that he would only get worse every year to follow. I knew he would disappear in big games and make maddening plays in small ones. I knew he would cost a lot and that his podcast would be kinda annoying. I knew there were things about him I didn't even know yet that I was gonna end up disliking.
And at first, all of that seemed to be coming true. The first few weeks of the season, he had some good games and some bad ones, but I fixated pretty much exclusively on the things he was doing that were already pissing me off. He loved pulling up for contested jumpers. He attempted some passes that made Danny Green look like Pete Maravich. And his late disappearing act was rivaled in 2024 only by Tommy Richman; one fourth quarter against the Hornets felt actively treasonous -- and I maintain the only reason we ended up winning that game was Nick Nurse sitting him in the overtime period. After the next game, I was on the podcast with Spike, and he accused me of hating Paul George. I started to protest and then I remembered I'd had a conversation with a co-worker just the day before where I said the exact words, "I think I might hate Paul George." I allowed that Spike perhaps had a point.
But no longer. I enter 2025 having no hate in my heart for Paul George. Spike undoubtedly believes I still do, since once he decides you hate a player, you could get married to them and he'd sign your guestbook with a smirking "C'mon... you still hate 'em." But I have felt basically nothing but positive feelings for Paul George since he became the team's consummate floor raiser and third guy at the end of November, and expect to basically continue digging his scene throughout the remainder of this regular season.
What exactly happened in late November? Well, the Sixers played the Pistons in Detroit. Joel Embiid was still out, but the rest of the team was in decent shape, Tyrese Maxey and Kelly Oubre Jr. were playing well, KJ Martin and Ricky Council IV popped off the bench and the defense was solid. Paul George had a pretty lousy scoring night, with just 11 points on 12 shots, but he had eight boards and five assists -- and that was all the team really needed, as they ended up beating the Pistons by 15. The next game was a much less professional W against the Hornets, but Paul George showed up majorly in that one: 29 points on 10-16 shooting and 6-9 from three, with a lot of tough shots that the Sixers needed every one of to stave off a late Charlotte surge and win the game by six.
Since that Hornets game, Paul George's performances for the Sixers have much more closely resembled his middling output against Detroit than his prolific night in Charlotte. But the Sixers' performances have too: Before Wednesday night in Sacramento, they'd been 8-2 in the 10 games they've played with George since, including some actually pretty good wins against the Magic, Spurs and (of course) Celtics. He was averaging 15 points a game over that timespan, while shooting just 40% from the field and 29% from three. But he was also averaging six boards, four assists and two steals, with a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio. And the Sixers had been scoring just fine without much help from him, up to 111 points a game over that stretch after just 105 a game their first 20.
Now, was this all about Paul George's contributions to the team, or the fact that Joel Embiid had started regularly playing games and Tyrese Maxey had started regularly hitting shots? The answer, of course, was Yes. The biggest reasons why the Sixers had gotten on track were that Embiid had been finally healthy enough to both start and finish whatever games he didn't get himself ejected from, and that Maxey hit at least three triples a game for more games in a row than any other Sixer ever had before. But it was also about Paul George winning them possessions with his active hands and solid rebounding, about him holding up on both sides of the ball no matter who he was matched up with, and about him contributing to a natural teamwide offensive smoothness that we saw exactly zero of through the first month of the season.
That last bit has been the particularly eye-opening part with Paul George. He's not Nikola Jokic or even Andre Iguodala, but his Danny of the Night-type tendencies displayed early in the season distracted from the fact that 85% of the time, he actually makes the right read and moves the ball well -- in an instinctively coherent way that I would not exactly say has been a historic hallmark of this Sixers team, and has been particularly lacking this season. Against the Blazers on Monday, there was an around-the-horn, swing-swing moment for the Sixers that ended with PG whipping the ball to a wide-open Maxey for a three -- a simple pass, but one made with such quickness and intention it made me want to cry. Even the next game against the Kings, he delivered a basic pick-and-roll bounce pass to Andre Drummond that Tyrese has somehow not connected on with Drummond once all season. (Drum then proceeded to throw the ball all the way back to Portland, but well, nothing to be done about that.)
So yeah, that Sacramento game. I basically wrote half of this article before it and half of it after -- hence the use of all the dreaded past perfect tense -- and this all felt a little neater to write about when Paul George was kinda floating through games stat-wise and the Sixers were winning nearly every night. Wednesday night was the opposite: PG put up 30-8-5 on good shooting and the Sixers lost in fairly devastating fashion. He was brilliant until he wasn't, and then he really wasn't; Paul's poor decision-making in the fourth quarter, including some of the most ill-advised post-ups I've ever witnessed on the Sixers (really saying something there obv) is one of the biggest reasons why we lost the game.
But I still wasn't really mad at him for it. It just demonstrated why we want Paul George to be more like the guy he's been for us the prior month: He can take over games for stretches, but only sometimes, and never for quite as long as you'd like. And really, you'd rather have him not taking over games at all -- you'd much prefer him drifting along the perimeter, shooting or attacking when called on to do so but rarely if ever as Plan A. Yeah, his scoring productivity and efficiency hasn't been great as such -- it basically never is when a former first option has to pivot to playing the Third Guy, especially early on in the process -- but it allows the rest of the Sixers to slot into their perfect roles around him, to be who they are at their best. That might not seem like much on a night-to-night basis for a guy with a $49 million price tag, but considering the Sixers still haven't lost a game when all three of PG, Maxey and Embiid both start and finish together -- only five games total so far, but hey, all still wins -- it hardly seems like a poor investment. I'm kinda loving it actually.
Clearly, if Joel and/or Tyrese end up missing significant time for the rest of the season and Paul George ends up being pressed into more active duty -- or worse, if he goes for the left knee hyperextension hat trick and has to miss a month or so himself -- this love affair will not last indefinitely. And surely there will be a big game late in the season where Joel is in his own head and Tyrese's legs have given out from Nick Nurse playing him 47.5 minutes a night and we end up wanting more from Paul than we're really comfortable with asking of him. But in a regular season where stacking up wins is suddenly quite paramount, Third Option Paul George seems like a pretty fucking great way to get that short-term task done. And considering we could be dealing with a guy taking one-legged threes and getting benched for the fourth quarter right now, I think my love for PG is strong enough to at least withstand the occasional podcast-related irritation or late-game meltdown without reverting to my old hatery ways.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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