He’s come a long way back from that awful exhibition in the summer of 2014 and the ensuing hubbub about whether NBA players should be competing for USA Basketball. Team USA might be saving him a spot in Rio next summer, but the Pacers need their All-Star wing back, especially since they’re going small and sticking PG-13 at the four, where he’ll take more of a pounding even while dominating whichever hapless power forward has to try to mark him.
But is he really back? We only got six brief games of him at the end of last season, and he wasn’t 100 percent, yet. Yes, he dunked, but the George who jammed it in LeBron’s face and was the biggest reason the Pacers even contended with the Heat during their four-year reign at the top of the Eastern Conference was a shadow of his former self in that two-week stretch of 15-minute nights. Was this their small forward superstar slowly getting his legs back, or a husk of that player who would never again reach the rarefied air of superstar?
In George’s own words, as relayed to Sam Amick of USA Today, it’s the former; George actually feels like he’s better than the player who made the All-NBA Third Team in 2013 and 2014 and was All-Defensive First Team in 2014.
“Honestly, I feel like I’m better than the Paul George I was (before),” George, who played sparingly and cautiously in the Pacers’ final six games of last season, told USA TODAY Sports. “I do understand that I’m coming back as a fresh new player, with a new team, but I’m not limiting myself. I still have the aspiration of being the MVP, still have the aspiration of being one of the best defenders, one of the best scorers in the league. All of that is still there. But now I just feel like I’m much … wiser. I’m a better ballhandler, a better playmaker. I just feel like everything is just enhanced having a year out from the game.”
That confidence is a big deal. There’s no way he tells Amick he’s a better player than he was before the injury if he’s not moving without restriction. There’s no way he says all that about the MVP if he’s not exhibiting the same otherworldly explosiveness and unruffled shot-making ability that turned him into a perennial All-Star before a basket stanchion robbed him of a year.
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But it was his next answer that should really make Pacers fans happy, since he’s now truly the lone star in Indiana, with ancillary pieces, David West and Roy Hibbert, departing this summer.
“Myself,” he said when asked which player enters this season as the best of them all. “I honestly feel that this is my time to prove it. There’s always going to be people’s opinions. There’s always going to be people thinking otherwise. But this is my time to prove it, and I’m ready. I’m ready to show the world.”
You need that conviction in your best player, however misguided. And it’s not like Paul isn’t capable of achieving that sort of acclaim as long as he’s healthy.
Is Paul George the best player in the NBA? No, and even before his injury that wasn’t really a debate. Is he one of the best two-way players in the Association? Absolutely. The only other wings we can think of off the top of our head (we’re missing people, obviously, so don’t freak out in the comments) who can defend at an elite level on the perimeter and are also heavily involved on the offensive side of the ball, are Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard — and neither are focal points of their offense like PG-13 was before he went down.
But George is coming off a career-threatening broken leg, one where we didn’t just gasp at what would be a long and irksome recovery, but a ghastly moment that had us wondering for a time whether PGP-13 would even walk again.
Now he’s throwing down between-the-leg dunks and talking about how he wants to win MVP. You don’t say that if you’re not truly confident in your own abilities.
Be happy Pacers fans. PG-13 seems pretty primed for liftoff.
(Via USA Today)
