Paul George needs to be the real Playoff P for the LA Clippers

The 2020-21 NBA playoffs have been a chance at redemption for Paul George and the LA Clippers. After a devastating collapse in the Orlando bubble last season, surrendering a 3-1 lead to the Denver Nuggets as well as a Game 7 lead, the Clippers cleaned up shop and fired Doc Rivers.

It wasn’t the first time a Rivers-led team had blown a lead in playoff series with the chance to close out. In fact, it was the third time he’s coached a team that has blown a 3-1 lead, joining the 2003 Orlando Magic against the rising Detroit Pistons and the 2015 Clippers against Josh Smith and the Houston Rockets.

Paul George is an easy target for the LA Clippers struggles in the NBA playoffs, but the self-styled “Playoff P” deserves credit when it’s due.

Doc’s teams have also blown three separate 3-2 leads in the NBA playoffs. While he does have a championship with the 2007-08 Boston Celtics, he also has this legacy of his teams not being able to seal the deal.

That being said, this is the NBA, and players are the ones who do the winning and losing, the choking and the delivering in crunch time. Paul George is one player who absolutely did not deliver last season in a spectacular Game 7 meltdown against the Denver Nuggets.

In that game, he scored 10 points while shooting 4-of-16 from the floor and 2-of-11 from behind the 3-point line. He finished the game with more turnovers (five) than field goals made. Over the course of Games 6 and 7, he was a cumulative -43.

After Game 7 was in the books, George took to the postgame podium and declared that this season wasn’t “championship or bust”. It was a strange thing to hear from a player who had been acquired from the OKC Thunder via trade for a record haul including:

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
• Danilo Gallinari
• 2022, 2024 and 2026 first-round Clipper draft picks
• 2021 and 2023 Miami Heat first-round draft picks and swap rights in 2023 and 2025

Two weeks later, the lie was put to George’s dismissive statement when Doc Rivers was fired as coach and replaced by top assistant Ty Lue, who won a championship as head coach with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors in 2016.

So, that was then, and this is now. The LA Clippers showed at times this season that they could be one of the best teams (or the very best) in the NBA, capable of beating anybody on any given night, and George was consistent and lethal in what may have been the best season of his career.

Over the course of the regular season, he set a career-best true shooting percentage of 59.8 with the third-highest usage rate of his career at 30.0 percent.

The playoffs are a different beast, however, and there’s less margin for error. For that matter, there’s next to no room for a letdown when you nickname yourself “Playoff P”, which has become something George is known for as a term of derision.

Now or never for “Playoff P” and the LA Clippers

This postseason has been something of a fresh start for George, however, or at least they have been to this point. After shaking off the ghosts of the Orlando bubble, Paul George has been solid. He’s averaging 24.9 points per game, up 1.6 points on his regular-season average, understandable with playing more than 40 minutes per game in the playoffs so far compared with just 33.7 in the regular season.

George has scored 20 points or more in every playoff game so far, something that may have gotten the Clippers into the Western Conference Finals last year. He did have a dangerously concerning stretch over the final four games of the first round against the Dallas Mavericks and the first game of the second round against the Utah Jazz where he shot just 35.9 percent from the floor and needed 19.3 shooting possessions per game to average 21.0 points.

He’s heated up magnificently in the last three games with shooting splits of 47-42-90 and averaging 29.7 points, but these long stretches where he is just a guy have to stop. At some point in these playoffs, the LA Clippers are going to need him to step up and win them a game. The times where he can fade into the background are over.

With his superstar teammate Kawhi Leonard out indefinitely, it’s time for Paul George to actually be “Playoff P”.