Fully recovered, George chases gold
Two years after grisly injury, star eager to help
It would’ve been considered a success story had Paul George simply returned to the NBA.
Frankly, it might have been viewed similarly had he accomplished much less than that.
But after appearing in his third All-Star Game in February and guiding the Indiana Pacers back to the playoffs, George will make his Olympic debut on Saturday against China.
George said he does his best not to think about the night in August 2014 when he suffered his gruesome, career-altering compound leg fracture.
He doesn’t want to revisit that place where his career trajectory was threatened. He doesn’t want to be perpetually tied to that night in Las Vegas two years ago, when he chased down James Harden and his leg crumpled against the basket stanchion in a Team USA scrimmage.
That’s why the Rio Olympics are important to him, not because he has anything to prove in terms of his recovery, but because there’s mental work to be done.
George, who played 81 games and averaged a career-high 23.1 points in his first full season back for the Pacers, needs closure.
“Ninety percent of the whole rehab is mental,” George told USA TODAY Sports. “You’re doing the same stuff, day after day; that gets tiring. It’s tedious work, rehabbing. That was really the whole battle was how do I keep motivation.”
Aside from a brief six-game return, George watched as the Pacers barely missed the playoffs in 2015 after reaching back-toback conference finals. Part of his incentive was getting the Pacers into contention, something he sees as a possibility next season with the additions of Jeff Teague, Thaddeus Young and Al Jefferson.
“I think Al is as good as it gets in terms of low-post scorers,” George said. “Thaddeus has been very underrated, been forgotten about being in Brooklyn.” But there was something else. USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo promised George a spot on the 2016 Rio team as an impetus to get back. Not that George, who was at ease discussing his past at a recent Jeep-sponsored USA Basketball event, needed it.
“Coach (Mike Krzyzewski) and I felt he was entitled to that spot,” Colangelo told USA TODAY Sports. “All he had to do was come back,” though Colangelo acknowledged he thought the worst after the injury.
“It’s literally steps,” George said. “You have to retrain yourself. Have to retrain how to walk, how to run, how to jump, how to cut. You got to get comfortable with that all over again.”
While he needed to retrain himself on basketball basics, remarkably, his confidence couldn’t be shattered. Even before this past season, in which he tied career-highs in both assists (4.1) and steals (1.9) on top of his scoring resurgence, George felt he was an MVP candidate.
“That’s internal strength,” Colangelo said. “You don’t teach someone that, to have that kind of quality.”
Now four exhibitions and a handful of Team USA practices into the Olympic cycle, George has proved to be a vital component of this roster even though he missed last week’s exhibition because of a left calf strain.
Among the NBA’s most dependable two-way players, George has “terrific potential as an international player,” Colangelo said.
“I take it upon myself to be that defensive stopper for us,” George said of his role. “We have so many scorers, so many weapons offensively.”
He could have been referring to Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony or DeMarcus Cousins, high-volume scorers who have carried Team USA offensively in wins against Argentina, Venezuela and China (twice).
But versatile wings such as Jimmy Butler and George are the bedrock of Team USA’s defense, especially as teams inevitably try to keep pace from the three-point line.
The fact that he has such a defined role after Colangelo questioned whether he’d even come back at all shouldn’t be lost on anyone. George has always been driven, but he said he had a newfound perspective after that dev- astating injury.
“Being away from the game, you cherish it a whole lot more,” he said. “It’s a reality that one day this thing could be all over. So stepping on that court, it’s refreshing. I found a whole new love that I didn’t think I could find in basketball.”
George doesn’t need a Team USA gold medal to validate his remarkable return. That being said, though, there’s a mental aspect to his injury that can’t be conquered unless the team wins a third consecutive gold.
“I think it kind of closes that chapter of being hurt,” he said. “I can put it out of my mind. I can move on to the next part.
“I think that really will signify … that gold medal, it’s unbreakable. I feel that really just tells the whole story.”