Paul George continues to show why he’s one of the NBA’s best players: ‘He’s going to stay hot all year’

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s 10:30 p.m. — nearly an hour after the final buzzer rang out in Target Center in downtown Minneapolis — and Paul George hasn’t picked up his postgame meal yet in the locker room hallway. 

Tucked away in another room, the Clippers superstar is receiving treatment from the team’s athletic trainers, part of an extended recovery process he’s undergone since last season, when his workload spiked following Kawhi Leonard’s partially torn ACL. That’s when he started using massages, cold tub and hot tub rotations and blood flow restriction, in addition to postgame lifting, to produce consecutive 40-minute performances. 

This season has been more of the same.

But unlike years past, the LA Clippers need George healthy now more than ever. After carrying them to a 126-115 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, one thing is certain: George has taken his game up another level this season.

A midrange baseline pull-up after creating space against Patrick Beverley? Bank shot. Stepback 3 against Jaden McDaniels? Nothing but net. Jab-step corner 3 with Anthony Edwards right there? Splash. Off-ball catch and shoot from 25 feet away to start the second half? Josh Okogie should have been closer. By the time he gave McDaniels a corner 3 mid-third quarter, George had to start fanning himself while Clippers rookie Brandon Boston Jr. motioned for George to keep eating.

“I was just cooling off the bumps and bruises, that’s all,” George explained with a wry smile. “Just trying to keep the bumps and bruises cooled off. Nah I mean, it feels good when you get into a zone. You just try to stay in it, try to find shots, try to find the right shots, that was really the key tonight. Just find the right shots and just be aggressive.”

George would end up with 32 points on 11-of-18 shooting from the field, a season-high 61.5 percent, to start the miniseries in Minnesota with a victory. It took only seven games this season for George to reach four 30-point performances. It’s the fastest start of his 12-year career by that measuring stick.

“He’s hot. He’s hot, he’s going to stay hot all year,” Terance Mann said of his teammate.

The scoring has been necessary for a Clippers team starved for offense without Leonard, but George’s point about the bumps and bruises has been just as meaningful. George’s league-leading 28.9 points per game (on career-highs of 50.9 percent shooting from the field and 42.2 percent from 3) are easy to keep track of. But he is also leading the NBA with a career-high 3.0 steals per game, highlighted by an eight-steal game in Week 2 against the Portland Trail Blazers. George got a bucket on Beverley in the second quarter, got back on defense to block a dunk by Karl-Anthony Towns, then ran the floor to serve Ivica Zubac a timeout-inducing alley-oop.

PG met him at the peak of his leap!

📺 @BallySportWest | pic.twitter.com/xN6FD8AMCC

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) November 4, 2021

George leads the Clippers with 29 deflections this season. Zubac and fellow center Isaiah Hartenstein are the only Clippers who have contested more shots than George. And George has been putting his body out there, such as in a sequence Wednesday night when he rebounded a miss by Karl-Anthony Towns, lost the ball after getting hit in the head, then got to his feet just in time to draw a charge on Towns. It was part of a 35-18 Clippers run in the last 8:39 of the third quarter that gave them an insurmountable lead.

“PG is having a hell of a season so far,” Mann said. “He’s doing a great job of leading us on both ends of the floor. Like, I know today he had a possession where he had a strip, got on the ground, got back up, took a charge. Like, that’s inspiring for all of us. And when you see your best player doing that, it just makes you play harder. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we withstood their run and won the game. Because, you know, when your star is playing like that, it just ramps you up.”

“When my guys go out there every night, I just want them to know I’m going to do whatever it takes, and it’s just how I always approach the game,” George said. “Just leave it on the floor. Makes, misses, just leave it on the floor and be happy with the results.”

George’s main man Reggie Jackson had been struggling with his shot prior to helping the Clippers sprint past the Thunder Monday, with Jackson getting a big hug from George at the end of the game. George has seen the Clippers lose multiple games this season where he has scored at least 30 points, but he has tried to keep his teammates pushing through the struggle.

“I just told him, ‘This is the worst that the team can shoot,'” George mentioned Monday night. “You know, I mean, obviously we can shoot worse than this. But the real picture, you know, this is the worst that we can shoot.”

Jackson then turned around and scored a season-high 29 points on 11 of 18 field goals and 7 of 9 3s in Minnesota. Overall, the Clippers made a season-best 21 of 36 3s, with George making 4 of 8 himself.

“We talked about the last game, that last shot he took, it’s crazy just how this game works,” George said of Jackson. “And I thought that shot took a lot of weight off. And tonight, you know, it showed. It looked like that, it took a lot of weight off of him. I thought he took the same shots he’s been taking. I think the difference is he knew those were his shots. You know, it wasn’t like he was trying to find his shots. He knew those were his shots tonight.”

Even with the success George has found, there’s more he could do. Actually, less would be more when it comes to his turnovers. George is averaging a career-high 4.1 giveaways per game this season, and though some of that is a byproduct of his astronomical 34.1 usage percentage (fifth-highest in the NBA), there are stretches where he simply loses his handle or throws passes as if defenders don’t have arms. The Clippers had a game with more than 20 turnovers and more than 20 made 3s for the first time in franchise history Wednesday, and George had a career-high eight of the 21 Clippers turnovers.

“A lot of them was just on passes,” said George, who described himself as his own worst critic earlier this season. “I think just getting a better feel for my teammates and just putting the ball on target. A lot of them are just, you know, passes: throwing the the ball, you know. Whether it’s a mishandle or mistiming. It’s just getting a better feel.”

Just as George has kept Jackson motivated despite his shooting woes, Jackson can return the favor in supporting George as he seeks to clean up his ballhandling.

“He studies quite a bit, and he’s very accountable for himself,” Jackson said, suggesting that there will be days where George’s turnovers are high due to his responsibilities offensively. “He takes a lot on his shoulders. I know he’s not feeling great about, necessarily, his eight turnovers. Which is crazy, and still played well, played extremely well for us. But, just at times, talking to him. Trying to just let him know, it’s several — a lot. There’s a lot that we ask of him, trying to crack everything we ask of him, try to beat guys one on one and break down defenses. So just a balance. At times, starting to realize when they’re loading up, just get off the ball. Let guys play, and it will come back around to you.”

But as head coach Tyronn Lue will attest to, some of George’s turnovers are part of an overall positive process that fosters the kind of offense the Clippers need to sustain him. The team needs George to make plays and get others involved. George runs more pick-and-rolls than anyone else on the team, whether it’s with bigs like Zubac or guards like Eric Bledsoe. It’s George’s 12th season, but he is still exploring parts of his game that haven’t been approached yet.

“He’s been good, because we just talked about it from last season that him and Kawhi were going to command a lot of attention,” Lue said of George facilitating the offense. “So we’re getting to the paint, we got to make those passes to make guys pay. So the more shots we make, the more the floor will open up and now you’ll be able to get downhill and get to the basket because they won’t leave as much. Last year, with Kawhi and PG taking I think 10 percent less midrange shots when they got into the paint and passing it out, 10 percent more, it’s a totally different team. So he’s continuing to do the same thing, but also getting to his spots and raising his will.”

The Clippers enter Friday’s rubber match at Target Center with a chance to get back to .500 for the first time this season. It’s just about impossible to get an MVP award for a team outside the NBA’s top 10 in win percentage. The work isn’t done for George.

“We got to start winning games, we got to start getting some momentum,” George said. “At some point, things have to change for us. We’re not a young team, we’re not a team that’s, you know, let’s just wait for guys to come back. The time is now for us.”

(Photo: David Berding / Getty Images)