Paul George is gearing up for a big season. It’s his first with the Oklahoma City Thunder and, perhaps more importantly, it’s a contract year. With free agency looming for the forward, what happens next for George is all that matters.
But now that his trade from the Indiana Pacers is a bit further in the rearview, George is opening up about his feelings about the move and what made him request a trade out of Indiana. George spoke to USA Today about the upcoming season and what happened over the summer to put him in Oklahoma City.
Though George talked about how Russell Westbrook isn’t like he expected, the most telling moment of the interview came when George talked about how upset the departure of another Pacers great made him. He said the team didn’t handle Danny Granger’s trade out of town the way he liked, and that experience soured him on the franchise in a way he never reconciled.
“I just want to touch on, man, on my situation. I’ve seen a guy that played for that (Pacers) organization,” George said. “Gave that organization everything they had, or everything he had, and was essentially traded to the dogs.”
At first it sounded like he was going to be vague, but then he started talking directly about Granger’s exit from the team in 2014.
And I’m speaking on Danny Granger, who was one of the better players in Pacers history. And at the time, they traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers. And this was a guy that was battling injuries, and that’s where you send him? The guy is trying to get back on his feet, trying to work back to this league, (and) you send him to the Philadelphia Sixers? Why, because that makes you better? Do what’s right by the player that’s given you everything. So (there) was a lot of that in my seven years there, a lot of that kind of played a role and (took) a toll on me on, ‘Well, what will they do to me now? Like, where would I go?’ So you know, it was, I think, God had me in this situation.
It certainly sounds like George didn’t trust the Pacers after that. He called the situation a “kick in the behind” that made him start to think about his future in the league.
“I took it as it was a kick in the behind, like, ‘Go ahead and go try to beat the Warriors. Go play alongside Russ and get your butt kicked against the Warriors,’” George said. “That’s how I looked at how that trade went down, because honestly we had no idea OKC was even interested or was in the trade until the trade actually happened. But again, I’m not here to trash Indiana. They have some of the best people I’ve ever met in their front office and in that organization. I grew up there.”
George hedged his comments and said he could go “on and on” about the positives of Indiana and the Pacers, but it’s certainly an illuminating comment about his feelings earlier this summer.
It’s interesting to see how different franchises handle their players and the levels of interpersonal trust that need to be there for things to stay comfortable. In a different franchise, with different players, the Paul George/Pacers situation could have played out differently. But clearly George didn’t trust the team to do right by him after the Granger trade. And so he pushed his own eject button and, like Kyrie Irving, will now live with the consequences of that move.
