This past summer, the Los Angeles Clippers changed the landscape of the NBA by not only winning the Kawhi Leonard sweepstakes and stopping the Lakers from forming the league’s next big three, but by pulling off a blockbuster trade for Paul George that led to the end of an era in Oklahoma City.
With the coinciding break up of the Golden State Warriors, George and Leonard teaming up couldn’t have come at a better time, but they were hoping to team up long before this season. In July, Kawhi Leonard told Rachel Nichols of ESPN that he tried to get George to the Spurs in 2017, when George informed the Indiana Pacers he intended to leave the team in free agency.
While the initial reports suggested that the Los Angeles Lakers were George’s preferred destination, George told Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN that he actually wanted to be traded to San Antonio with Leonard:
“I wanted to be traded to San Antonio,” George says. “We wanted to go to San Antonio first, and we didn’t make that happen.”
According to a source Youngmisuk spoke to, the Spurs and Pacers did have discussions about a George trade, but they ultimately didn’t have the assets to compete with teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, who gave up Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis for George in 2017. At the time, the most the Spurs could have offered for George without giving up LaMarcus Aldridge was some combination of Patty Mills, Danny Green, Manu Ginobli, or Paul Gasol, fillers and future first-round picks.
Considering Leonard sat out all but nine games of the 2017-18 season with a quad injury, it’s safe to assume the Spurs aren’t kicking themselves for not going all in. What they should be kicking themselves for is the return they inevitably got for Leonard, but that’s an entirely different conversation.
George and Leonard haven’t taken the floor together for the Clippers yet, but it’s not hard to imagine their games complementing each other well and propelling L.A., already one of the best teams in the league, to a new level competitively. It may have taken longer than they would have liked for them to team up, but they’re in a nearly perfect situation with the Clippers right now.
