Paul George is back! I had originally included Paul George in Issue 87 looking at top players returning from injury or ineligibility, but then the LA Clippers forward hung 40 on the Kings, delivering the Clippers a 111-109 win.
We’ll talk about George and the Clippers today instead because the storyline from Saturday’s win was not focused solely on George’s big game but the team played without Clippers’ projected starters Kawhi Leonard and John Wall who were rested in just the second game of the season. For Leonard, this is exactly part of the load management plan which the Clippers articulated for the 31 year old coming off a full-season absence because of his ACL injury.
George didn’t just drop 40, he added six assists, six rebounds and two steals. The forward shot 16-31 overall and 3-10 from behind the arc, adding a perfect 5-5 from the stripe. The rest of the team wasn’t great and the LA Times accurately summed up the deficiencies in the Clippers’ lineup when Leonard and Wall are missing.
One game after making two of his eight shots against the Lakers, Norman Powell, who has put pressure on himself to play at an All-Star level while starting in Leonard’s absence, made one of his 10 shots.
There were three bizarre delay-of-game calls, and stretches when the offense ran dry without a true backup point guard with Wall out.
Fun stuff. The other players who did their best to fill a stat sheet in Saturday’s win were 25 year old Ivica Zubac (age 25, C) who had 10 points, eight rebounds and an assist in 24 minutes, and 32 year old Reggie Jackson. Jackson, a guard, played 27 minutes and scored 14 points on 4/5 shooting including 3/3 from 3-point range. He added five assists, a steal and two rebounds for 24 Sorare points.