Last year will be known to Indiana Pacers fans as “The Lost Season” thanks to Paul George’s terrible injury. As soon as he went down the Team USA scrimmage it was clear that the 2014-15 season wasn’t going to be what anyone had hoped for after The Struggle of the season before.
Any hope of some sort of miracle season were all but dashed with the extended time George Hill and David West would miss with injuries of their own. Even when they both were back it was often a grind as the Pacers didn’t really have an offensive strategy beyond hoping Aggressive George Hill™ would be enough or C.J. Miles or Rodney Stuckey would score 30.
We saw Paul George it the last few games but when he was carried off the court by West and Miles in the Pacers’ final game, fear began to creep in that maybe PG wouldn’t ever be the same, or even close to it.
In the preseason some of those fears began to die down as we saw Paul George knocking down shots and being the offensive weapon he once was. He had a dunk here and there but nothing like we had seen during the 2013-14 season.
Then it happened.
Not to overstate what it was, but it was the clearest sign to date that Paul George that he was “back”.
As fans we probably worried too much and were forgetting that despite the catastrophic nature of the injury he was lucky enough to avoid major damage to the muscles and tendons in his leg. In a very literal sense he’ll never be the same as he was before the injury, but this was one of the best signs so far that he’s still the player we saw a few seasons ago.
The slog of a 82-game season will be a better indicator than one athletic dunk during the preseason but seeing him flying through the air cause a small avalanche of tweets to descend upon my timeline.
It would appear that Paul George has regained his bounce https://t.co/VHgoipG9nE
— Michael Lee (@MrMichaelLee) October 21, 2015
paul george showing his full recovery with a dunk.
— beans 🉐 (@vinceacolentava) October 21, 2015
Even George himself said a play like that helps convince himself that everything going to be all right.
Paul George on his monster dunk: “It felt good. Those plays are ones that build the confidence that I’m back.”
— Nate Taylor (@ByNateTaylor) October 21, 2015
Outside of all of the talk of what that dunk meant there was one thing that came to my mind: Indiana Pacers basketball will be watchable again. Sure there were moments last season that were exciting, but there wasn’t that feeling that all it would take to get Indiana back in the game was a few big plays. You knew it would be a grind 99% of the time.
But now we can to look forward to PG flying through the air and giving us highlight worthy plays almost every game.
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