The veteran wing player has been extremely disappointing in his first season in the City of Brotherly Love. Despite trade rumors at the deadline, George remains a Sixer. So, what’s next?
It doesn’t seem as if rumors of Paul George being traded out of Philadelphia at the trade deadline were ever that serious. However, that they even existed at all goes to show how disastrous of a season 2024-25 has been for the Sixers.
At this point, it’s very unlikely anything turns around for the remainder of the current season for George, especially given he seems to still be nursing a pinky injury despite now being available for Nick Nurse to deploy. But, given the rumors were floating around last week, now feels like a good time to fast forward and look ahead to some possibilities for the Sixers and George heading into the offseason.
No changes to role
This may disappoint a lot of Sixers fans, but if Daryl Morey remains in charge after this season, this is probably the most likely scenario for George entering 2025-26. Perhaps the biggest reason for the “run it back” approach with George is there was simply not enough continuity this year. In other words, there’s nothing to run back. This season was just a wash and Morey and company will cross their fingers that next season will be better. As painful as it sounds, there might not be an easier path to contention next season. It’s a harder sell to fans with George a year older because with how poorly George has played this year why would things get any better next season in what will be his age 35 season?
But if Morey is going to encourage fans to “squint hard enough” to see this team contending for a championship as he said in his post deadline presser, he’s certainly not going to nuke this roster. The Sixers seemed to be hanging on both sides of the fence at this deadline, shipping out a few veterans, but not other players like George, Eric Gordon, Kelly Oubre and Guerschon Yabusele. It signaled a desire on behalf of Morey to get younger, but keep enough of this core around to maybe still get into the playoffs this year and hope for better health next season. Morey still believes in this roster, as delusional as that sounds, and therefore is probably unwilling to admit the George contract was even a small mistake. In that case, we’ll be seeing a lot more of George next season.
Remains on the roster but loses minutes
This season, George is averaging 32 minutes per game. That might seem like a lot, but Nick Nurse has a penchant for riding his starters into the ground. For example, Tyrese Maxey is averaging a career high 38 minutes per game, and Maxey’s previous career high was last year’s 37.5 minutes per game, which took place in Nurse’s first season in Philly. So perhaps the 32 minutes George is averaging would tell us that Nurse is not going to put him out there for close to 40 minutes a night if he doesn’t earn it.
Again, if George is this inefficient now, it’s hard to see his percentages improving next season when he’s a year older. The development of Justin Edwards and Ricky Council IV may have forced Morey’s hand a bit and accelerated the trade of Caleb Martin last week. A coach like Nurse who isn’t used to losing doesn’t seem like the kind of coach that would blindly play George solely because he received a max contract. If Edwards and Council are both back next season and continue to earn playing time, who’s to say those minutes wouldn’t come at George’s expense?
Traded
The obvious caveat remains that if Morey is still the President of Basketball Operations, it would be a surprise to see George playing anywhere else next season. For what it’s worth, if the Sixers finish the season the way they started it and do not even qualify for the play-in tournament, I do think the Bob Myers rumors may heat up, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Let’s explore a few scenarios in which Morey sticks around and the Sixers still trade George in the summer.
Let’s start by going back to Nurse and the way he coaches. If Nurse does not believe George is a player that commands between 35 and 40 minutes a night, there’s an argument to be made that the Sixers are better off trading George. You might as well get off the contract if your coach isn’t going to play George the way he plays most of his starters, and certainly his star players, one of whom was supposed to be George. This kind of discussion between Morey and Nurse likely hasn’t happened during the season. By all indications, the Sixers seem to still want to sneak into the playoffs and see what happens. Therefore, Nurse is probably going about every day trying to figure out how to win the next game and not thinking about how much money George is making or what the team would look like if George was traded.
Tweaks like subtracting Reggie Jackson and Caleb Martin to bring in Quentin Grimes and Jared Butler are one thing, but a George trade would be a pretty seismic change to the rotation during the season. If Nurse is to explain to Morey in the offseason that he believes George’s best days are behind him, that they didn’t get what they thought they were getting and he won’t play George in a bigger, or even equal, role next season, a trade could become a possibility.
It’s also possible that the trade market wasn’t as big for George last week as it will be in the summer. Maybe Morey is willing to admit the signing was a mistake and would be open to trading the 15-year veteran. But generally speaking, these kinds of bigger trades do not happen during the season. This trade deadline was in many ways an anomaly with players like Luka Doncic and De’Aaron Fox getting moved. George is also considerably older and obviously not as good as Doncic and Fox so a team that’s willing to take on the rest of George’s contract would have to be willing to undergo a little bit of a roster makeover of its own. That kind of makeover is more likely to happen in an offseason. The deadline for the most part is meant to allow contenders to round out their starting lineups or figure out who their first two or three players off the bench will be and for lottery teams to get younger and add more picks.
The high frequency with which players move around in the offseason is something that many NBA fans enjoy. Not only will the Sixers have more time after the season to decide what they want to do with George, but every other team in the NBA will have more time to chart out its direction for 2025-26 and beyond. Those kinds of discussions happening in every front office could increase the market for George and present workable scenarios for a trade to happen. It seemed like only a couple teams were even rumored as possible fits for George at the deadline. But what if that number grows from anywhere to five to seven?