George bounced back in big way
He led playoff run after Leonard injury
Early in ESPN’s broadcast of Game 6 of the Western Conference finals on Wednesday night, analyst and former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy pondered why Clippers star Paul George — or anyone — would dedicate any personal bandwidth to social media criticism.
“I’ve heard that, that he faces undue harsh criticism and I just don’t see it in print media,” said
Van Gundy, who apparently has managed to avoid his own online detractors.
“Now talk-show hosts, yeah, they’re gonna say stuff. But if you’re going onto social media for either validation, affirmation or even taking criticism from them, I don’t understand why a player would go on social media.”
But George’s detractors — those who are left — don’t live just on Twitter, or among the talking heads on TV. After his welldocumented struggles in the bubble last postseason, George was the target of ridicule from other players, too, including the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker, who famously needled the Clippers forward by calling him a soft something or other in their first meeting in January.
“For whatever reason, there’s a lot of chirping and people just living in the past ... a lot of mouth,” George said then, not long after he visited the “All the Smoke” podcast, on which he talked about his offseason workouts, during which he’d listen not to music but to motivational recordings of Lakers Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant.
George didn’t block out the criticism, he acknowledged it. Moreover, healthy and motivated, he vowed to “address” it on the court.
“Almost two years, if not two years, removed from having my shoulders operated on, I am just in a healthier mind state, I am in a healthier place. And I’m coming back with a vengeance,” George said in January after dropping 26 points on 8-for-14 shooting in an easy Clippers victory over Sacramento.
“I didn’t like — not so much of the noise and everything around it — but just the fact that people saw weakness. And I had to address that. I had to answer that. That fueled me. That put me in a place where I wanted to come back and be myself again.”
And so, after signing a four-year, $190 million contract extension ahead of his 11th NBA season, George made his seventh All-Star team. In April, he earned recognition from
the league as the Western Conference Player of the Week for a three-game stretch in which he averaged 33.7 points and 5.7 assists while shooting 60.9% from 3-point range.
He played despite a bone edema in his toe, averaged a career-high 5.2 assists per game — to go with a career-high-tying 3.3 turnovers — and was named to the All-NBA third team.
When a sprained right knee curtailed fellow All-Star Kawhi Leonard’s participation during the second round of the playoffs, George lifted the Clippers to the first conference finals appearance in the franchise’s 51year history.
When the Clippers finally bowed out with Wednesday’s 130-103 loss, George had logged 511 minutes, 64 more than the next closest playoff participant. And he’d produced, becoming the sixth NBA player to record 500 points, 150 rebounds and 100 assists in a single postseason, a list that otherwise includes only LeBron James (who has tallied those totals eight times), Larry Bird (three times), Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler and Tim Duncan.
George also goes down as just the third NBA player to score 20 or more points in every playoff game in a run that extended at least 19 games, joining Michael Jordan (who did it in 1992, ’97 and ’98) and Kevin Durant (’12,
’18).
His fellow Clippers were most grateful.
“Just talking about the playoffs, this first round, Kawhi was amazing against the Mavs, especially in Game 6 (45 points on 18-for-25 shooting), and PG did his job,” forward Nicolas Batum said during his postseason comments Thursday.
“When Kawhi went down, (George) had to take over, and he did,” Batum added. “In a good way. In a big way. I mean, Game 5 in Utah and then the rest of the series, and even in this series, the numbers don’t lie. He was amazing. He carried us, like in the last game in Phoenix after all those games, he has been unbelievable.”
In the Clippers’ eight playoff games without Leonard, George averaged 29.6 points, 11 rebounds, 5.6 assists and 1.4 steals per game.
He shot only 43.8% from the floor and 30.4% from 3-point range, but he accepted the additional burden and averaged 22 shots per game in that stretch, four more than he had when Leonard was alongside him in the lineup.
And, as Batum referenced, there was his Game 5 gem in Phoenix, when George’s 41 points on 15-for-20 shooting and 13 rebounds kept the Clippers’ season alive another game.
“I don’t really care what people say about that guy,” Batum said. “I think he redeemed himself and he showed that he’s a big-time player in this league, and he deserve all the praise
in the world. I’m a big fan of his, and I’m very happy for him. I’m very happy for him that he could show the world who he is.”
“I just think Paul was huge for us all season, not just the playoffs but all season,” coach Tyronn Lue said shortly after the Clippers’ run fizzled in Game 6, when George finished with 21 points and nine rebounds but shot just 6 for 15 from the field and 1 for 6 from deep.
]“I know you judge off the playoffs and he had a hell of a playoff run, and I know he wanted to play and keep competing, but he was out of gas. You want to give it your all and he did that and that’s all you can ask for. If you leave it all on the line and leave it on the floor, you can live with the results.”
Still, even after all George’s valiant efforts over the past few months, there remained a voice dissatisfied with those results. His own.
“I came up short again,” George said Wednesday night, sporting a Clippers’ T-shirt gifted to him by an appreciative fan. “Proud of what we did as a team. I wasn’t out to prove nothing to nobody but to show up as a leader for this team and to put us in position to get to where we got to — again, came up short. My good wasn’t enough.
“But there’s room for improvement ... I’ll try to continue to push the envelope and get better. But it’s good, though. I’ll look back. I’ll reflect. I’ll see what I need to get better at and address it right away when it’s time to start training again.”
Joaquin Niemann hits driver from the 16th tee during the second round of the Rocket Mortgage Classic on Friday. Nieman shares the tournament lead with Tom Lewis at 10-under-par 134.