Every NBA offseason, there are a few things that seem like they’ll obviously happen. During the summer of 2017, one such thing was that the Indiana Pacers were going to trade Paul George. This was because George reportedly told Indiana that he planned on leaving in free agency after his contract expires during the 2017-18 season.
So the Pacers, hoping they’d be able to get something back for their star, shipped George to Oklahoma City in exchange for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. The fact that he got traded to the Thunder was a bit surprising, as other teams seemed far more interested in acquiring George, but no one was stunned he was moved.
However, as we learned on Thursday, there was one person who was surprised by this: Paul George. The All-Star forward posted a video to Instagram with a rather curious caption about his offseason.
“I knew I wasn’t good enough the past year and wanted to give my team more,” George wrote in the caption. “Didn’t know I was gonna be traded but what happened, happened. Now I’m faced with the same mission to be the best playing along side the best and damn I’m excited about that!”
It’s your standard motivational athlete offseason workout video, but George writing that he didn’t know he was going to get traded seems like he’s re-writing history, no? In fairness to him, nothing indicated that he explicitly asked for a trade. In fact, the original report about leaving Indiana included the fact that he did not ask his agent to submit a trade request. But when you tell a small market team that you plan on leaving during the offseason, that kind of forces their hand and makes the odds of a trade happening go through the roof.
George is in a really great spot right now, while Indiana has a pair of young players to inject some youth into their core. Everyone seemed to make out well, even if they were blindsided by the obvious thing happening.
