Paul George: Analyzing 12 Plays from the Superstar’s First Game Back
By Jon Washburn
The Meh: Delicate rebounding
Paul George has never been an elite rebounder. This is mostly a function of how he plays defense, as he’s usually called upon to defend the opponent’s best perimeter player on a nightly basis. Still, his athleticism and instincts have enabled him to occasionally pull down impressive rebounds when necessary.
His rebounding was mostly a mixed bag on Sunday night. On the few occasions where he was in good rebounding position, he never attempted to fundamentally “box out” his man or push him away from the basket. He mostly just stood in between the man and the basket, hoping the ball would just bounce to him. We can probably assume his lack of conditioning had something to do with this, as the last thing tired people want to do after playing NBA-level D on the likes of Dwyane Wade for 20 seconds is bang with enormous humans and explode off the floor to grab the rock.
On his first rebound, he actually benefited from being uncertain. As the ball hits the rim, George falters with his footwork and actually looks scared to meet the ball in the air. Fortunately, the ball took a weird carom and his man was pulled so far out of position that PG was able to track down the rebound in the corner. His second rebound was better, as he actually elevated in traffic to pull down the board in midair. After he landed, he immediately looked up and even looked to explode out on a fast break before settling into the offense. Overall, his rebounding settled into somewhere between “mediocre” and “bad.”
The Good and Ugly: Whatever it was that this fast break was
Yikes. Emotions were running high. The crowd wanted to explode. All of the season’s pains were about to be absolved in one glorious moment. And then that happened.
On the plus side, George showed off his elite defensive instincts throughout the entire defensive possession, first helping correctly, and then recovering to his man to force the loose ball which he was able to track down. From there, everything went downhill. It’s possible that George was just so excited that he got caught in his mind between what he wanted to do.
“Should I dunk it? Should I send these fans into a tizzy? Nah, I don’t want to go too hard. Maybe I’ll just lay it up. Oh great, I’d already measured my steps like I was going to dunk it. I’m in the air. Can I dunk it? Nah, I’ll just…”
On Twitter, Pacers fan @JCSourwine gave a pretty good possible analysis:
“[George] actually seemed to surprise himself by how much space he created between himself and Deng, which he acknowledged post game. I think when he ‘checked his rearview,’ he was actually expecting to be challenged more. In the long run, the separation that he created between himself and the defender may just be a positive.”
Regardless, it wasn’t pretty, and it was indicative of what is probably the most concerning problem for Paul George and his development going forward: his inability to stop, cut, or elevate off of a good sprint. You saw previously with the way he eased in and out of cuts and floated out towards the perimeter, but it’s not a coincidence that his three worst plays of the game, by far, all came off of fast breaks.
Next: Continued – Where PG Must Improve