Sikatanan

Last night, the Clippers lost to a Nuggets team missing its three best players playing on a road back-to-back, and it reinforced what I’ve been thinking all season: Paul George is the Clippers’ best player, and if that remains true, the Clippers are screwed.

George is a fascinating character, as equally capable of thought-provoking musings and jaw-dropping dunks as foot-in-mouth gaffes and perplexing mistakes. And he’s spent a lot of time thinking — and talking! — about his ideal role on the Clippers.

[As always, I've collected a bunch of in-context illustrative video GIFs of Paul George doing good and bad things. They can be found here or throughout the article.]

To ESPN, at the start of last season: “I'm the two. Kawhi's the one, I'm the two. So that part we nipped in the bud. Like, there's no ego when it comes to that.”

On JJ Redick’s podcast a few months ago: “I haven’t won at any level. I haven’t won at high school, I haven’t won in college, I haven’t won in the NBA. What do I have to do to win? I have no shame in Kawhi’s one, I’m the two.”

These clips were lauded at the time, the sign of a great player accepting his optimal role. George has had plenty of success as the best player on a team, including some bitter battles against Miami when he was a young Pacer and a more recent run to the Western Conference Finals after Kawhi Leonard went down early in the playoffs. We’ve seen plenty of other players continue striving to be the alpha on teams with far less playoff success, so for George to show that self-awareness is rare.

But it’s no longer honest. For better or worse, George is the best guy on the Clippers, at least right now.

After the team traded for Harden, George reportedly offered to become a "glue guy" to help establish a clearer pecking order for the Clippers, but coach Ty Lue had enough of that approach after one passive game:

"You're not a glue guy!" Lue told George, in front of the team. "You're a f---ing bad motherf---er!"

That expletive-laden encouragement was enough to spark George, who has since averaged more than 25 points per game (even after last night’s six-point debacle against Denver).

Overall, George is having arguably the second-best season of his career, behind only the 2018-19 Oklahoma City campaign that ended with George earning a third-place MVP finish. He’s averaging 24.2 points on above-average 59.3% true shooting (which takes into account free throws) while leading the Clippers in points, shot attempts, free throw makes and attempts, usage, and steals. In the eight games since Ty Lue yelled at him, George has been a smidge behind point guard James Harden in touches per game with 66.8, nearly fifteen touches more than Kawhi Leonard despite a similar minutes load. George is the unquestioned leader of the offense.

You know what George looks like on offense: the slinky drives, the pull-up jumpers. He’s aggressively hunting threes when centers are too slow to step up. Even when they do, it’s usually not enough: [video here]

But while the on-ball stuff gets the highlights, George has long been one of the most underrated off-ball players in the league. He’s a willing screener and an active cutter, and the Clippers have a variety of packages to create chaos and get him the ball on the move: [video here]

Immediately after the Harden trade, George was confined to spacing the court from the corners too often for my liking. But he’s been much more involved since the first few games. The chemistry with Harden is still developing, but Harden’s unique passing abilities should eventually level up George’s off-ball activity, such as on this terrific start-of-quarter play: [video here]

I love this little pet sequence the Clippers use to get George a designed duck-in on defenses looking for a cut to the three-point line: [video here]

Hat tip to Dallas writer Iztok Franko for noticing that the Clippers ran that exact same play two games in a row to start the fourth quarter, getting a bucket each time.

(Side note: the Clippers’ offense has shown a few flashes of creativity in the last few games, Denver excepted. The results haven’t always followed, but Lue needs to install more motion to revive a moribund, iso-heavy approach — and the players need to buy in.)

Turnovers have long been a George bugaboo — his handle has always been smooth, but his decision-making is a little loosey-goosey. Historically, nobody loves to split the pick-and-roll more, to often disastrous results. But the addition of Harden has clarified George’s role — with either Harden or Westbrook almost always on the floor, George doesn’t have to distribute as much and can focus on scoring. That’s resulted in fewer assists but also the second-lowest turnover rate of his career.

While only a quarter of his shots come at the rim, he’s converting at near-career-best rates. Neither his midrange nor his three-point percentages feel wildly unsustainable, but his overall efficiency has been boosted by turning one 18-footer into a 24-footer each game.

Defensively, George remains a monster, even if he's not the absolute force of nature he once was. Watch as he harasses Tim Hardaway around a screen and then jabs at him like a boxer, forcing a retreat until the ball gets knocked out of bounds: [video here]

George is perennially a league leader in deflections, and his 3.3 per game are tied for fourth-most this year.

George’s elastic wingspan, active hands, and intelligence make him an ideal passing lane bandit. Here, he correctly identifies that his man, Devin Vassell, is cutting into a space already covered by Kawhi Leonard. So he hides in the paint like a lurking crocodile, just his nose showing above the water, until an unsuspecting Zach Collins passes the ball directly to him for an easy meal: [video here]

But despite all that, George's limits as an alpha dog are apparent. Although he doesn’t have the record-scratching stop-and-survey tendencies that Kawhi Leonard possesses, a frustrating number of possessions begin and end with George bludgeoning the ball to death: [video here]

George shoots just 37% from the field on possessions with 7+ dribbles, an ugly number. Distressingly, nearly a fifth of George’s shots fall in this group. The addition of Harden hasn’t decreased their frequency (although anecdotally, they appear more often when Harden and Kawhi are both riding pine, when George feels the urge to play more hero ball than he should).

George is a well-rounded and versatile scorer, but he’s not elite at any one play type. Synergy classifies him as “average” or “good” at spot-ups, in transition, coming off screens, and in isolation (the best players rate as “very good” or “excellent”). The one major area where Synergy says he excels, shooting out of the pick-and-roll, is artificially boosted by shooting 15-of-29 from deep on those plays. As we saw above, it’s a good shot for him, but it’s unlikely to fall more often than flipping tails as the season progresses.

When the jumper is splashing, George has always looked unstoppable. But it doesn’t hit quite enough for him to approach, say, Kevin Durant levels, and he doesn’t have anyone as talented as Devin Booker backing him up (or is it Durant backing up Booker now?). In other words, as good as George is (and he’s very good), he isn’t the level of scorer that the absolute best players need to be to lead their team to the promised land — at least without significant help.

Kawhi Leonard’s counting stats look fine (21 points per game on similar shooting splits as George), but that’s a significant drop-off from the scoring robot we’ve seen when healthy over the last few years. Something about Leonard still doesn’t look right. He carried the scoring burden against the Nuggets in lieu of George, but it took him 26 shots to get to 31 points, and they looked ungainly. He can’t get to his spots as easily as he once did — just 17% of his shots have come at the rim, the lowest number of his career by far. They’ve mostly been replaced by floater-range toughies.

While Kawhi’s jump-shooting numbers look fine on the surface, a jumper-only diet isn’t nutritious enough to survive on. Kawhi needs his physical burst back to redistribute his shot selection to something with a healthier balance.

Unfortunately, neither James Harden nor Russ Westbrook provides much more steadiness. Both still bring important things to the table: passing and shooting for Harden, pace for Westbrook. But Harden’s well past the point where he can be an elite force night in and night out, and Westbrook is essentially a high-usage energy guy when he comes off the bench.

It sucks to watch, because frankly, George is playing awesomely. He is likely the third-best second fiddle in the league, behind only whichever Suns star you think is the beta and Damian Lillard (and given the defensive discrepancies, I wouldn’t argue much if you took George over Lillard). George’s nits would be microscopic if Leonard were playing up to snuff. But number-one guys are always under a magnifying glass, so we have to focus more on what George can’t do as the number one than on what he can as the number two.

The Clippers aren’t buried. The recent insertion of Terance Mann for Russ Westbrook looks like a winning decision. Even after last night’s horrific showing, the Clips’ starting lineup of Harden/Mann/George/Leonard/Zubac is destroying opponents by +24 points per 100 possessions, an absurd number. The same lineup with Westbrook instead of Mann was getting outscored by a brain-melting -27 points per 100. That’s a hell of a swing — driven heavily by opponent three-point shooting variance, but still!

Kawhi has also started slow in the past and recovered just fine. He’s not always been a guy who bounces back from injury without missing a beat like Durant. It’s entirely possible he finds his legs and burst as the season progresses, just as it’s possible his legs explode yet again. Harden and Westbrook will settle into their roles, and the Clippers could make another move around the margins.

So, yeah, George as the number-one guy isn’t an ideal situation. Heck, Paul George isn’t even Paul George’s ideal alpha dog. But last night was a great example of where the Clippers are now: George put up one of the worst games of his career while going 2-for-13 from the field, and the Clippers subsequently lost to Point Deandre Jordan. Leonard’s inefficient 31 points weren’t enough; the Clips only go as far as George can take them.

At his best, he’s somewhere around the 15th-best player in the league right now, give or take a few spots. Champions have formed around players of that caliber: the 2014 Spurs had a declining Tim Duncan and rising Leonard plus a strong supporting cast, the 2008 Celtics had a quartet of excellent but not top-five guys, and the 2004 Pistons arguably didn’t have a single superstar (I wouldn’t make that argument, but many do!). But all those teams had multiple guys around that range. Leonard hasn’t been anywhere close to this point, much less Harden or Westbrook.

PG is playing more than well enough to uphold his part of the bargain. But he’s been thrust into a role he isn’t suited for, and the Clippers may pay the price.

​

The Orlando Magic’s elite defense is a bit unusual. They aren’t filled with lockdown one-on-one stoppers. They give up a ton of shots at the rim and an average number of corner threes. Their transition defense is porous, and they’re almost middle-of-the-pack in foul rate.

But the Magic are long as hell and brimming with kinetic energy. They put that effort to good use, attacking the ball when it’s in the air and swarming the passing lanes like an invasive species.

More concretely, Orlando is tops in the league in opposing turnover rate, fifth in opponent rim field goal percentage, and fifth in defensive rebounding. The defense is predicated on ensuring opponents get, at most, one shot attempt up while protecting the paint and corralling loose rebounds.

[Folks, thanks for reading! As I always do with these posts, I've collected a bunch of illustrative video clips. You can view them in-context here or at the link in the comments. Thanks!]

The Magic allow opponents to shoot just 84.3 field goal attempts per 100 possessions, the fewest in the league. That more than makes up for their league-average defensive effective field goal percentage (eFG%). In other words: you may be able to hit a jumper on them, but you’d better get it right the first time.

In practice, Orlando combines size, activity, and a variety of schemes to keep opponents guessing. Their favorite tactic is to shade off the weakest opposing shooters to a cartoonish degree, ensuring there is always at least one extra body in the paint ready to show early help. That willingness to leave weak or reluctant shooters completely alone to load up the paint gives them more margin for error at the point of attack, enabling their roving band of marauders to take risks and hunt steals.

Watch this possession from their recent game against the Indiana Pacers, the best offense in the league until they ran into Orlando: [video here]

Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton pushes the pace after a make, but the Magic are essentially defending three Indiana players with four bodies as Cole Anthony ignores TJ McConnell on the perimeter. Mo Wagner (playing some of the best ball of his career) shows at the nail to slow Haliburton’s drive down before retreating, and Anthony (shotblocker extraordinaire!) swallows up Haliburton’s hesitant attempt at a finger-roll.

The Magic’s rotations weren’t perfect in that play, but the sheer number of bodies involved stymied the Pacers.

And those bodies are huge. Every ballhandler in the rotation except Anthony is at least 6’4”, and every big man is, appropriately, 6’10” or taller. Even the wings are gigantic. Length can cover up mistakes, allowing the Magic to wreak havoc in the passing lanes.

A great example is when Orlando comfortably beat Milwaukee (sans Damian Lillard) by fifteen the other day. The Bucks shot 49% from the floor compared to the Magic’s 43%, and Giannis scored 35 points on just 22 shots. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, no?

And yet, Giannis had six of the Bucks’ 19 turnovers, and the Magic only allowed five offensive rebounds. Orlando tried to keep Giannis guessing with a wide variety of coverages. While the smoke and mirrors didn’t prevent Giannis from having a monster scoring game, he and his teammates struggled to complete even simple passes.

The Magic switched most Giannis-driven actions at the beginning of the game but began sprinkling in some soft hedges, deep drops, a couple of possessions of zone, and even this hilariously hard-charging blitz from Goga Bitazde that startled Giannis into a clumsy turnover: [video here]

Giannis eventually solved all of these problems, but the Magic took away his supporting cast and rode their own offensive aggression (30 made free throws!) to an easy win.

You may have surmised this from the previous paragraphs, but the Magic’s skullduggery in the passing lanes forces opponents into the path of least resistance: isolations. The Magic’s collective length works wonders in a team concept, but most Orlando players are rather pervious in a one-on-one game.

But in a large sample size, even consistently isolating weak defenders tends to create poor overall offensive efforts. The Orlando Magic force the second-most isolation possessions, per Synergy, and they can live with that when it means limiting opponents to the lowest assist rate of any defense in the league.

Let’s dive into some of the players themselves. We have to start with Jonathan Isaac. Isaac is finally healthy, but the team is wisely being cautious with his playing time. He’s averaging just a shade under 14 minutes per game, but despite that scant run, he’s averaging one steal and 1.4 blocks per game.

That, folks, is historic territory. Nobody in league history has hit those steal and block numbers in that little playing time. In fact, only two other players have done that in fewer than 20 minutes (give or take two games from some guy named Truck Robinson in 1985): Nerlens Noel and Vlade Divac, who both needed nearly half-again as much playing time as Isaac to hit those numbers.

Isaac has pterodactyl wings, a preternatural feel for where the ball will be, and the kind of motor only a guy who has watched games from the sidelines for two straight years can have. I’m not sure what LeBron James was going for here, but I’m quite certain he didn’t expect Isaac to apparate from behind Anthony Davis like an evil wizard: [video here]

While Isaac likes to appear out of nowhere, Jalen Suggs is unmissable. He turns opposing ballhandlers into chew toys, wearing them out with constant pressure. He isn’t airtight, but he’s just so annoying to play against, and his two-way pressure on the ball is a huge part of what this team does on both ends.

I also want to highlight the rookie Anthony Black, who has looked like a seasoned pro starting for the injured Markelle Fultz. He has exceptional screen navigation for a raw, gangly guard and has already put forth some inspiring sequences tracking with ballhandlers.

But my favorite part about Black is his elite close-outs. He’s a little jumpy but has an uncanny ability to stop on a dime and contest with his full length without leaping past or into a shooter. Watch how fast he runs at Cam Johnson before leaping to contest and then somehow landing in the same spot he took off from: [video here]

(Also, this has to be one of the most unique and unintentionally funny charges taken I’ve ever seen:) [video here]

It isn’t just role players playing defense. The Magic’s offensive stars are doing their part. Franz Wagner is the rare Orlando player who doesn’t rack up steals, but he might be the best positional wing defender on the team. Paolo Banchero has fought harder (and more successfully) than I expected out of college; he will always be an offense-first player, but he’s already closer to average than bad on the other end.

We haven’t talked much about the injured Markelle Fultz and Wendell Carter, but the Magic’s true starting five (those two plus Wagner, Banchero, and Suggs) allows a measly 95.1 points per 100 possessions, largely thanks to an unsustainable but still impressive 85% defensive rebounding rate. Both should be returning soon.

It’s reasonable to think that the Magic’s already fearsome defense could get better with the returns of Fultz and Carter. If they figure out how to score in the second half of games, the Magic may be looking at an earlier-than-expected playoff appearance.

Let’s start with the obvious caveat: it’s been three games. Nothing we’ve seen remotely approximates a significant sample size. But it’s also long enough that it’s hard to resist the dangers of extrapolation. Where is the line between optimism and fantasy?

I was not particularly excited about the 76ers before the season started (and I’m usually excited about everything). The James Harden situation had sapped my hope for Philly, and while they made some clever moves on the margins, it felt like Boston and Milwaukee had surged ahead in the East with their splashy summer acquisitions. Without Harden, the Sixers seemed destined to glumly shuffle their way through the season with an eye-and-a-half on free agency.

[Like I usually do with these posts, I have included a variety of video clips throughout. Click here to view them in-context.]

But as of today, the 76ers are one of the teams I’ve enjoyed watching the most. They went toe-to-toe with revamped Milwaukee in the first game despite an off night from Embiid, beat a bad Toronto team, and blew out an inexperienced and overwhelmed Portland. The schedule hasn’t been brutal, but the Sixers’ play has been encouraging.

Best of all? The Harden saga is over far quicker than most imagined, and Philly got a nice haul: a bunch of draft picks (including a tasty unprotected 2028 from the Clippers) and a hodgepodge of potentially useful forwards, including Robert Covington, Nic Batum, Marcus Morris, and dunk machine KJ Martin.

Embiid has been a monster in his last two games, looking the part of a scoring champ while distributing at career-best levels and playing cacophonous defense. Kelly Oubre has been shockingly effective (don’t hold your breath). Jaden Springer only plays a handful of minutes per game, but he has some of the best guard blocks I’ve seen in a long time. Tobias Harris has been his usual underappreciated self but even more efficient.

And yet, my optimism for Philly is primarily piqued thanks to the efforts of Tyrese Maxey. In three games, Maxey is averaging 30 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 6.3 assists while shooting 50% from the field and 56% from deep on high volume. He’s handling more, passing more, shooting more, and turning it over less.

It’s too early to talk about Most Improved Player awards (or is it?), but Maxey’s name would undoubtedly be in the conversation.

Maxey averaged more 25/5/4 in 13 games without Harden last year, but this is a substantial leap even over that. So what’s causing this surge?

Perhaps the biggest change is in Maxey’s usage. With Harden on the team, just over a quarter of Maxey’s possessions were categorized as “spot up” by Synergy Sports. That’s down to fewer than 10% of his possessions in 2023-24, and it’s been replaced by a massive uptick in plays designed to get Maxey the ball on the move, mostly via handoffs: [video link here or in comments]

As you can see above, new coach Nick Nurse has implemented some fun guard-guard screens and handoffs using Patrick Beverley as the initial screener, designed to get Maxey onto the weakest perimeter defender.

The Sixers have also tried to spring him way up high. If Maxey is given the slightest bit of runway, he brings devastation and ruin: [video here or in comments]

Maxey isn’t some ballhandling genius or finishing wizard; instead, he’s like a one-cut running back in the NFL. He is patient but explosive, decisive, and efficient in his movements. Maxey’s bag isn’t the deepest, but he doesn’t need a Mary Poppins purse when the moves and finishes he does have work so well. You don’t put unnecessary accoutrements on a bullet train. (In fact, that is perhaps the biggest reason for optimism that he can sustain this production level: it’s easy to see him developing more craft and getting even better.)

Also like a one-cut running back, Maxey has shown new aggressiveness in seeking and finishing through contact: [video link here or in comments]

After averaging just 3.6 free throw attempts as a junior, Maxey has 23 in three games so far. Maxey is slightly built, but he’s so quick that defenders are rarely in legal guarding position, and when he initiates contact, the refs are forced to blow a whistle.

He’s also become much better at extending the ball in front of him while he drives and shooting when he feels contact, a move amplified by his strong floater game. It’s a positively Harden-esque technique: [video link here or in comments]

And while nobody can replace Harden as a traditional point guard, Maxey’s playmaking numbers have improved with his on-ball opportunities. He’s become far more patient in the pick-and-roll with Embiid.

Through three games, Maxey has 10 dimes to Embiid. That 3.3 assists per game rate is almost triple last year’s 1.3, despite the team running far fewer pick-and-rolls than the previous season. Anecdotally, it feels like Embiid is popping more with Maxey as opposed to the short roll he mastered with Harden, but when you can shoot like Embiid can, there are no bad options.

Overall, Maxey has assisted on 29% of his teammates’ buckets. That’s a far cry from the number that Harden and other pure point guards put up, but it’s nearly half-again as high as Maxey’s previous best mark. He’s a capable passer who never makes mistakes: he has 19 assists on the season versus just three turnovers!

In most cases, having so few turnovers is a bad thing because it means that the passer isn’t being aggressive enough, but I’m not sure that’s the case here: Maxey’s 12.3 potential assists per game are 14th in the league as of the time of this writing. That’s an excellent mark (if somewhat inflated by Maxey’s high minutes totals — Nick Nurse plays his favorites hard) considering how much of the offense flows through Embiid.

Speaking of playing hard, Maxey’s improved defense effort down the stretch last season has carried over into this year. While he’ll never be even an average defender, he’s at least trying. As a short, skinny guard without kangaroo hops or orangutan arms, his upside here is limited, but he’s hardly Trae Young from two seasons ago (even current Trae Young isn’t that guy, thankfully).

One positive defensive note: Maxey’s rebounding numbers have been off the charts for someone his size. While I don’t think they’ll stay anywhere near that level, the Sixers should be encouraging this behavior. Every defensive rebound he grabs has the opportunity to turn into the fastest of breaks, and Maxey looks to push the pace whenever he can: [video link here or in comments]

I’ve saved the best for last: Maxey is currently 14-for-25 from deep. While that won’t hold forever, this is the third straight season of Maxey hitting over 40% from three while increasing his volume dramatically. His combination of deadeye shooting and Sonic speed is what makes his entire game work: defenders either have to close out hard, opening up the lane, or they respect his speed too much and give up the deep ball.

Put it all together, and Maxey looks on track for an All-Star campaign.

Philadelphia is likely still a significant player short of true title contention, but Maxey’s ascent changes the measurements of the piece they’re missing. If he can be the primary perimeter scoring threat, perhaps Philly will look for a two-way wing instead of a guard? Maybe they look for table-setters, not scorers? Morey has all these new shiny new picks to play with, and he won’t be sitting on them past the deadline.

The 76ers won’t be the favorite to emerge from the East, but they aren’t the never-wases people sneeringly dismissed before the season, either. This iteration of Maxey is a far more dynamic scorer than Philly Harden ever was, and we’ve never been fortunate enough to see a healthy Embiid in the playoffs. Add in a true third banana (or orange, or pineapple — whatever shape they take), and the line between reasonable optimism and fantasy gets blurry quickly.

The 76ers’ season felt over before it began, but this is why they play the games. Maxey’s incandescence has sparked the light of hope.