After some starting difficulties Paul George has found his role in the Oklahoma City Thunder. Also thanks to a diet in the summer it plays efficiently alongside Russell Westbrook. If things continue to go uphill in OKC, the Lakers could look into the tube in 2018.
After the Indiana Pacers had failed at Cleveland Cavaliers in the first playoff round in 2017, Paul George had clear goals for the following off-season. He wanted to work on his physique in the summer, get stronger and heavier – to be even better at slipping into almost every role on the court. As superstar and best player of the team.
The 6th. July, however, he was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The team of Russell Westbrook, the MVP, who had managed the first triple double season since Oscar Robertson. Much of George’s future role would change – so the training plan had to be rethought.
Suddenly, he – and in the world of NBA media anyway – was all about the question of how to do that with PG-13 and Westbrook together on the floor (that Melo would join them later on was not an issue yet). In order to provide himself with a satisfactory answer, George studied video tapes from the times of Thunder in which Westbrook had played together with KD for hours. What worked well? What’s less good? To obtain first-hand information, George even spoke to KD personally, as he recently told ESPN.
One of the results of his research was a diet and a change in the summer training plans:”In order to be able to walk with Russ, you have to be in very good shape. I found out early on. That’s why I changed my diet and did more cardio training. I wanted to be able to move faster and rely less on mass,”he explained to ESPN.
So George was physically and mentally prepared to become a worker for Westbrook. He wants to be a part of the team, he wants to give Russ all freedoms and do what helps the MVP best. Admittedly, at the beginning of the season this was still very enforced – but this was not so much George’s fault as the good will of Westbrook to force more actions for his co-stars. But that’s just not his game: a quiet playmaker, who primarily and deliberately creates a motion-open for his fellow players, doesn’t become a Westbrook in this life any more.
This is exactly what everyone involved now seems to have understood. After the bumpy start of the season, after many crisis meetings, a rethink took place in OKC, which was pushed forward by George and even Melo. Put simply, the new recipe for success is that Westbrook should play and dominate like he did last season. The rest comes automatically, George and Melo practically give up role-players in the gold-plated luxury variant.
This is illustrated by the increase in Westbrook’s usage rate to 37.4 in December. The fact that Russ just plays and doesn’t try to back down for anyone helps us a lot,”Melo explained at the end of December. George agreed 100 percent.
OKC has won ten of the last 15 games, the home advantage in the playoffs is within reach. It is more than legitimate to claim that things are now running smoothly at the Thunder – and this has a lot to do with the fact that George was the last to flourish in his role as a co-worker. With his “new” body, he scurries around blocks away from the ball, runs cuts, sees the right spots, which gives him Westbrook’s presence.
Of course, especially in the first third of the season George seemed to be misplaced and disorientated in some sequences. He explained this by saying that he didn’t know Oklahoma’s playbook yet (okay, you could ask: which playbook?) and that the conversion takes time. A classic phrase – which, as the successful December showed, but proved to be quite right.
With 7.4 attempts per game, George takes on more threesomes than ever before in his career. His rate of 43.4 percent is remarkable, with 36.5 percent of his triples coming from catch and shoot. These are not surprisingly much more than at his pacers times, while the number of his deals moved in the opposite direction (35 percent compared to 41.7 last season) due to pull-ups from the dribble.
“I can play in any offense, I can play with any player. There was no ego with me when I packed my things and came to OKC. It’s all about helping the team and especially Russ. It took time, but I think I can offer a lot and have now found my niche,”says George, explaining his adaptability.
While the Thunder-Offense has risen in the course of the season so far, the defence has been strong from the outset. Especially Anthony’s work is surprisingly positive, one notices that he has something to prove. OKC has the fifth-best rating in the league – and George has a lot of influence on that.
Long before he became a two-way superstar, he was regarded as a chain dog in one-on-one. He brings the necessary mentality to be an elite defender, because working at the far end of the field has the same priority as working at the front. In Indiana, however, he was not able to live it out so well, as he had to shoulder too much weight on the offensive, which consumed a great deal of his energy.
In OKC, this is different thanks to Westbrook’s omnipresence in the attack. George can wear himself out in the defense: In a clear victory against the Warriors at the end of November he kept Kevin Durant (one admittedly not quite fit) at 21 points. In the Christmas Game against the Rockets he defended practically every position from Eric Gordon to James Harden to Clint Capela in the 112:107 victory. He also scored 24 points on the side,
If you believe George, his biggest individual goal is to become a defensive player of the year one day. He wasn’t really in the discussion about that so far – which also had something to do with the small Indianapolis market,”I think I had some great defensive seasons. But I didn’t have the big stage to get the attention I needed. It’s a bit different here in this team and I’m proud to be one of the best defenders of the team every night,”he says.
So, whoever evaluates George’s statements gets the feeling that he feels very comfortable at Westbrook’s side in the meantime. However, this should not hide the fact that he will be the league’s most sought-after free agent next summer – and his recent praise of the Lakers fans for their recruiting efforts was at least unfortunate.
However, he does not consider it relevant that the Lakers offer the larger market than OKC. His ultimate goal is always to win. He wants to have the feeling of being with a team where something is in the making and has a promising future “Winning is more important than anything else. It’s the ultimate happiness of life” – which he’s been denied until now:”I don’t know what a title feels like.”
If George believes that OKC’s chances of solving this shortcoming are better than elsewhere – then it could be something with a common future beyond 2018.