Paul George, a native of Palmdale, California, enjoyed tremendous individual success for five years playing for his hometown Los Angeles Clippers after forcing a trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2019 that stunned the basketball world. In 2024-25, the Clippers will embark on a new era when they open the Intuit Dome, a state-of-the-art arena that they can call their own.
Why, then, did the nine-time NBA All-Star who has never lived on the East Coast uproot his family and move from sunny Los Angeles to Philadelphia at 34 years old?
"I thought everything just aligned perfectly," George said during his first availability with Philadelphia media Tuesday afternoon. "I think we've got a real, legitimate shot."
George agreed to a four-year max contract worth about $212 million with the Sixers -- including a player option -- soon after NBA free agency opened, forming a dangerous All-Star trio featuring George, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey that figures to have it all on the floor: shooting, scoring, defense and every other skill a team could hope to have in its three highest-profile players.
"We're all in," Sixers managing partner Josh Harris said. "I've been here for the last 12 years; this is amongst if not the best team we've had since I've been here."
Any NBA team would love to add someone like George to their roster, but especially in today's restrictive salary cap environment, it is immensely difficult to create the structure of a good team while building the requisite financial flexibility to add someone of George's ilk, particularly in free agency. The Sixers were able to do exactly that by spending more than a calendar year exhibiting tremendous patience that at times frustrated many.
Sixers President of Basketball Operations Morey decided that James Harden was not worthy of receiving a long-term contract. When Harden forced a trade, Morey had little interest in offers centered around fringe stars who may not be the ideal third piece behind Embiid and Maxey, ultimately trading him for a package that helped the Sixers load up on draft picks and enhance their cap space dreams. The Sixers even delayed offering Tyrese Maxey his five-year contract for an entire year to protect every penny of financial flexibility possible.
On Tuesday afternoon at the team's training facility in Camden, New Jersey, it was official: those cap space dreams had come to fruition in every sense of the word.
George has teamed with special players before. His half-decade in Los Angeles allowed him to play alongside two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard for many years, and that duo spent most of last season sharing the floor with Harden. Before that, he spent multiple years with an All-Star iteration of Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City.
But the Sixers believe that the grouping of George, Embiid and Maxey is the perfect blend of skillsets, positional versatility, youth and experience -- George is the elder statesman of the trio despite having strong years left in the tank, Embiid is 30 years old and Maxey is still just 23 years of age.
"Tyrese has the youth, the legs, the speed, the quickness," George said, comparing the Sixers' guard to Westbrook. "I know it's tough for [Embiid] to play one-on-one from the block, so I'm looking forward to giving him a chance to play his game."
"They'll help me a ton."
While Embiid likes to slow the game down and dissect opposing defenses and Maxey changes the pace with his blazing speed, George presents a happy medium as someone whose game translates to any tempo that Sixers head coach Nick Nurse chooses to operate with. George has long been considered one of the most portable stars in the NBA, a player who can fit well on just about any roster because of his defensive acumen and ability to pose a threat on offense as an on-ball scorer or off-ball weapon.
In theory, George gives the Sixers everything they have lacked. He is one of the most prolific wing shooters of his era, not to mention a terrific scorer who has averaged more than 20 points per game in each of his last 10 full NBA seasons. He is a defensive playmaker on the wing, and said he is willing to do "whatever it takes" in terms of on-court role to give the Sixers the best chance to win.
George can ease the offensive burdens of Embiid and Maxey as an elite third option or enable them to work with maximum spacing because of the threat his shooting poses. He can ease their defensive workloads by taking on challenging assignments in high-leverage situations. George is one of the most well-rounded stars in the NBA, and if one was to create in a lab the sort of wing player they believed had been the missing piece for the Sixers in recent years, that player would turn out to look a whole lot like this:
Similarly to how Embiid is viewed, nobody doubts George's ability to thrive in the regular season. How his legacy will be defined depends on whether or not he ever achieves considerable postseason success. George has two Conference Finals appearances in his career -- one in 2014 when he was emerging as the young leader of the Indiana Pacers and one in 2021 with a short-handed Clippers team. But he has never made an NBA Finals, and fair or not, has a reputation for coming up short in high-pressure situations.
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After logging 33.8 minutes per game in the 2023-24 regular season and averaging 22.6 points, he played 37.1 minutes per game in the Clippers' first-round playoff series -- a six-game loss to the eventual Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks -- and averaged just 19.5 points per game, despite Leonard missing the vast majority of the series. George shot only 41.1 percent from the field during those six games. He had a masterful and efficient 33-point performance in Game 4 to even the series at 2-2, but followed it up with shooting lines of 4-for-13 and 6-for-18 in two losses that ended his Clippers tenure.
Now, Embiid and George have each other -- and Maxey -- to rely on in hopes of finally silencing the doubters who believe they will never achieve significant team success. George, who said there is "no better place to win in than Philadelphia," likes their chances.
"I think we are a pretty complete team," George said. "I think that should be what puts us over the hump."
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