Paul George led the Sixers with 30 points in the team’s upset victory over the Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers.
One of the main reasons the idea of tanking this season never resonated with me is that, performance to date notwithstanding, a team led by Tyrese Maxey and Paul George should be well ahead of the bottom-feeders of the league. So even if Philadelphia made the decision to shut Joel Embiid down for the season, the Sixers theoretically shouldn’t sink too far for a tanking strategy to be viable.
We saw evidence of that theory in Friday night’s surprising 132-129 win over the Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers. Maxey and George combined for 59 points, with George leading the charge with 30 points on 11-of-21 shooting, including 6-of-11 from three-point range. It was the fourth time this season George has drained at least six three-pointers, and the fourth game out of the last five where he has tallied at least 25 points.
After the game, head coach Nick Nurse discussed George’s performance in the victory:
“He didn’t get off to a great start. It took him a minute to get into the flow, but I think you could just tell the difference in his decision to make a play. At first, he was hesitant thinking should I take it, should I drive it, then he just started playing in the second half and he just started volting up in the second half and going, and I thought he made a couple of drives as well, and some good pass outs. Once he got into the lane he started hitting out because they were sending bodies at him. Whatever it was, it just took him a minute to get into the rhythm of the game, you could see the big difference in his assertiveness.”
Teammate Kelly Oubre, Jr. had a simpler explanation for George’s outing:
“Paul [George] was being Paul. I guess that’s what you expect, at the end of the day, he went out there and was being great and stayed as a good catalyst for us throughout the whole game. I think he did a really good job of staying mentally strong throughout the game, with the pressure and everything.”
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson had George at the front of his mind when asked what stood out to him most in the game:
“Oh man, they [Sixers] played great. PG [Paul George] was unbelievable. Got to give them credit, they had 21 threes. We never found a way to stop them, I think we tried everything in our toolbox. Obviously, we scored the ball, but give up 132 points that’s tough, so, defense definitely let us down tonight.”
As for George himself, a 16-27 start to the season certainly wasn’t what he expected when signing with the Sixers in free agency. He was happy with how things went on Friday, though:
“It felt great. The season hasn’t gone our way. We haven’t been on the good side of luck, but it felt good. We did everything right as much as we could tonight.”
Amidst all the injury turmoil this season, even setting Embiid aside, it’s fair to note that George and Maxey have still only played 24 games together. Paul discussed continuing to gel with Tyrese on the court:
“I feel better and better as the games come along. It just comes down to games played to be honest. You start to form a rhythm and just [an] understanding of each other. I think that’s kind of what we’ve got, too.”
Given what we saw on Friday, you can tell why George believes this group is still capable of competing:
“Both ends I thought we defended, offensively we shared the ball, we created, we made shots. To be honest, even in games that I was out, they took a couple teams to the wire. So we’ve been playing fairly decent basketball again, it just comes down to not being available when we need guys. So that’s the only thing. You [to your first question] can’t really say that we need extra people here, I think we’ve got enough. Obviously, they’ll make decisions that they think we need, but anybody in this locker room, they’ll say the same.”
Friday night’s win was a good first step back on the road to respectability. We’ll see if George and the Sixers can take the next one tonight against the Chicago Bulls.