NBA playoffs All-Western Conference Team: Paul George
Paul George was not supposed to be on a list such as this. He was the wingman on the LA Clippers, not the star. His playoff failures have been plastered across the world as career-defining indictments of who he is as a player. If the Clippers made noise in the playoffs, such as reaching the franchise’s first-ever Conference Finals, it would be because of Kawhi Leonard, not “Playoff P.”
Yet Kawhi Leonard went down in the second round, suffering a knee injury that kept him out the rest of the postseason. George responded by taking on the mantle of solo star and performing in his way, running the show but allowing the offense to spring players open to score. He didn’t run the heliocentric offenses that Portland or Dallas did, instead letting his teammates pop for career nights.
George led the Clippers to a pair of wins without Leonard to beat the Utah Jazz, then helped push the Clippers to win two more games in the conference finals before the Phoenix Suns closed things out. He was often on the floor with a pair of buyout players, a second-year second-round pick and a former undrafted free agent. Yet George and the Clippers found a way to win.
For the postseason George played by far the most minutes of any player, logging 776 minutes when the next highest total was Devin Booker’s 647. He scored 26.9 points and 9.6 rebounds per game to go along with a solid 5.4 assists. He wasn’t perfect, but he stepped up and proved his doubters wrong (at least to a nuanced extent) with a strong two weeks leading his team.