Clippers 2021-22 preview: Paul George ready for expanded role

“Fresh braids. Right-to-left cross – better than hot sauce. That man, Paul George!”

You’d feel pretty good about your work too if your co-workers hyped you up like Reggie Jackson would his pal last season when they’d follow each other on postgame Zoom media availabilities.

“Big buckets! Trece! No. 13, that man – PG!” 

Jackson was articulating the Clippers’ belief in Paul George, which remained strong last season even as plenty of people – online and, in some cases, on the court – lined up to deride the now-seven-time All-Star for how he’d been playing and what he’d been saying.

Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker called George a “soft (something-something)” and the jokesters on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” went with “Way-Off P.” There seemed no end to memes stemming from the Clippers’ stunning crumble in the bubble.

Those challenging couple of months of basketball captivity were capped by an especially horrendous half. With the season on the line and the franchise’s first Western Conference finals berth there for the taking, George and Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers’ much-ballyhooed stars, aligned to score just five points on 2-for-18 shooting – including one widely panned miss off the side of the backboard.

In the immediate aftermath of that Game 7 loss to Denver, George managed to say the wrong thing and the true thing simultaneously: “Year 1 together, first run together, of course we wanted to win this. But we’ve been very optimistic about us being together and building something going down the road.”

It wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear from a star on the team with such brash and immediate championship goals. But he wasn’t wrong.

A couple of months down the road, in Year 2, George said he felt healthier, in mind and body. Fueled by a desire to address “the fact that people saw weakness,” he spent offseason workouts listening not to music, but to motivational recordings of Lakers Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant.

Last December, George signed a four-year, $190 million extension, enjoying the backing of the franchise, and of new Coach Tyronn Lue, who sought to both make his stars comfortable and hold them accountable. George mind-over-matter’d a nagging foot injury and made his seventh All-Star team, and the All-NBA third team.

His heavy lifting helped the Clippers move ahead one significant space on the board – to the conference finals for the first time in the franchise’s 51-year history.

When Leonard was felled by a torn anterior cruciate ligament in the second round of the playoffs, George hoisted the Clippers on his surgically repaired shoulders, carrying them not through the finish line – not this time – but within a couple wins of the NBA Finals.

In the Clippers’ final eight playoff games without Leonard, George averaged 29.6 points, 11 rebounds, 5.6 assists and 1.4 steals per game.

He logged 511 minutes, 64 more than the next closest playoff participant at that point – and he made much of them, becoming the sixth NBA player to tally 500 points, 150 rebounds and 100 assists in a single postseason. The rest of that club: LeBron James (who has tallied those totals eight times), Larry Bird (three times), Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler and Tim Duncan.

George also became the third NBA player to score 20 or more points in every playoff game in a run that extended at least 19 games, joining an even shorter list that includes just Michael Jordan (who did it in 1992, ’97 and ’98) and Kevin Durant (’12, ’18).

“When Kawhi went down, (George) had to take over, and he did,” forward Nicolas Batum said after the season. “In a good way. In a big way. … The numbers don’t lie. He was amazing. He carried us, like in the last game in Phoenix after all those games (when George scored 41 points on 15-for-20 shooting), he has been unbelievable.

“I don’t really care what people say about that guy,” Batum added. “I think he redeemed himself and he showed that he’s a big-time player in this league, and he deserves all the praise in the world. I’m very happy for him that he could show the world who he is.”

And here we are: Another season, another opportunity for George to show the world what he’s made of.

Leonard remains sidelined indefinitely following surgery to repair his torn right ACL in July, and so George – the 31-year-old Palmdale native and proud dad of three – says he’s eager to take on the responsibilities as the Clippers’ clear first option.

“I mean, I’ve seen it all, from doubles, traps. You name it, I’ve seen it,” George said, thinking back to his time as the go-to guy in Indiana early in his career. “What you do take away from being the No. 1 option on a nightly basis is how I can control the game and impact the game and play the game, slow the game down how I want it to go.

“How can this game be a Paul George game?”

And every bit as key: “All of that is just going to come from, how do I help my teammates? How do I make them better?”

Remember George’s comments on TNT following last season’s opening win against the Lakers, when he responded honestly to a question about whether he’d received preferential treatment the season before? “Dudes that put in the work, who build themselves up to be where they’re at, (there’s) a reason they get to that level,” he said. “They know what they need and they know what makes them play at a high level.”

The way Lue sees it, that’s leadership. It was a statement reflective of George’s work ethic, which new Clippers assistant Brian Shaw helped instill when he was an associate coach in Indiana between 2011-13 and would talk to George about Bryant’s extraordinary training regimen.

“Think the biggest thing with him is just leading by example,” Lue said recently. “Just staying late, working on his game.”

But George knows the Clippers will benefit if they not only see what he does but hear what he says.

And so, this offseason, he made it a point to reach out and arrange workouts with teammates old and new. (Not much of a chore, George acknowledges, considering how much he likes all those guys.)

“He’s taken me under his wing to pick his brain as much as I can,” first-round draft pick Keon Johnson said. “Just everything that he’s been through throughout his career, it’s a lot for me to learn from.”

That goes not just for the rookies, but for newcomers such as Justise Winslow, a seventh-year wing who signed in free agency: “Got some work in with him, and he seems like a great guy. Very unselfish, very talented, as we all know, but I feel like that relationship is growing. He’s someone I feel I can go to and lean on.”

“In training camp, there were a few situations when we didn’t start out practices like we were supposed to, our energy was not there, and he stopped a drill,” center Ivica Zubac said. “To let us know, ‘We can’t be doing this, we gotta pick it up, we just gotta get locked in.’

“That’s something he wouldn’t do before as much and you can really tell he took that role seriously and he’s doing it.”

Leonard, like everyone else in the Clippers’ camp, said he has faith in George to succeed in an expanded role.

But, Leonard said, it doesn’t really matter what he thinks. Doesn’t matter how enthusiastic Jackson or anyone else in the organization is. Doesn’t matter how people outside of it feel, either.

Whether this is a Paul George season will be determined only by Paul George.

“His expectations need to be better than mine,” Leonard said. “So it’s all about him and his mindset. Doesn’t matter about what I think he should be doing or how he should play. I’m going to definitely give him feedback to help him get better, but it’s all based on him.”