INGLEWOOD – Thank you for everything, “Paul You Suck.”
Wednesday was a weird night at Intuit Dome. Weirdly fitting.
In a lightly anticipated return, Paul George returned to face the Clippers for the first time since signing a max four-year $212 million deal with the Philadelphia 76ers in free agency. George’s old team won, 110-98, to improve to 4-4 while his new team fell to 1-6, including 0-2 in games he’s played.
He got booed, and cheered.
He got high-fived and harangued.
It was sincere. It was choreographed.
Thanks for everything. Thanks for nothing.
In a game that was televised on ESPN but attended by fewer than 16,000 people, George got a 50-second tribute video. (It featured footage of him dressed as Waldo for Halloween, that ill-advised costume that became a meme – “Where’s Paul, doe?” – applicable every time he didn’t show up in big moments: e.g. last season’s first-round playoff exit, in which he scored 33 points in one good game but otherwise shot 36% and averaged just 16.8 points as the Clippers’ first option across the other five contests against Dallas – and then promptly demanded a max contract or a no-trade clause lest he take his talents elsewhere. The Clippers, obviously, wisely, did not acquiesce.)
He got dissed: “PG, talk less. Play more!” read one sign on the one occasion that the folks stationed on the much ballyhooed Wall all held up signs that were meant – an educated guess here – to deride George’s comments on his podcast.
He had relayed, in an episode of “Podcast P” last summer, what Angelenos would tell him while he was with the Clippers: “It wasn’t no, like, ‘Oh welcome to the Clippers.’ [It was] ‘You in L.A. but you should have been a Laker’ … [but] I’m on the B Team.”
He said postgame he didn’t see the signs, but the Clippers seemed to approve of those messages because they put them on their mumbo-jumbo, 360-degree Halo Board, maybe in an effort to will into existence a hostile home-court advantage, or because they really think George should shut the heck up: “PG THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK.”
But it’s all good, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer told ESPN: “Very good human being. Like him a lot, except when they play us.”
After the game, in which George scored 18 points in 24 minutes on 7-for-9 shooting, the Palmdale native reiterated his previous positive comments about the Clippers when he was asked about the tribute video: “This organization was first class .. and it was very appreciated.”
And then there was the fans’ mixed reaction, half of which he seemed to surprise him even if he invited it, saying on his podcast that dropped Monday: “I’ve never really heard them boo people.”
He has now. “I mean, you know, it was stupid,” he said, “I was a free agent, it wasn’t something that I demanded a trade or went against the team. … I did the best for me in that situation.
“And,” he pointed out, “there were some cheers. I appreciate them.”
And what about his old team’s flashy new $2 billion home?
“It was great, it was great,” George said. “I wish it would have been more packed out. I didn’t think it was quite packed.”
Passive Aggressive P doe.
Nice Intuit Dome you got here; too bad it hasn’t sold out yet.
Between the literal lines Wednesday, the Clippers were purely aggressive, double-teaming George in his second game back after dealing with a bone bruise in his right knee.
He added seven rebounds, three steals, two assists and a block, but Norman Powell – who claimed George’s departure would be addition by subtraction for the and the Clippers – outperformed him: 26 points on 8-of-10 shooting.
And so George couldn’t slow the spiral for a Sixers team that currently looks nothing like the contender many expected it would become when Philly added George alongside stars Joel Embiid (who’ll serve the second game of a three-game suspension against the Lakers on Friday) and Tyrese Maxey (who was hurt Wednesday).
The Clippers were supposed to be contenders, too, when George arrived from Oklahoma City in 2018, the centerpiece of a blockbuster trade that paired him with free agent signee Kawhi Leonard.
But when George left this past summer, it was after five unfulfilling, unlucky seasons: Nice first Western Conference finals appearance you got there; too bad you couldn’t win that championship.
Now it’s in the eyes of the beholder, whether fans remember George’s finer moments or those in which he disappeared.
“He was a great Clipper, to be honest,” said Alejandro Sanchez, who wore a George’s No. 13 Clippers jersey to Wednesday’s game and slapped palms with George – now sporting No. 8, in honor of Lakers great Kobe Bryant – as he left the court at halftime.
“He was part of a Clippers team that took us somewhere we’ve never been before and I respect that,” Sanchez said. “I have to cheer that.”
Or boo, as Joel Caro planned to.
“Somebody who’s a max player – or claims to be a max player – I expect a Kobe Bryant mentality, even at a mild level: ‘I’m the guy. You need to go to me!’” Caro said. “But in crunch time, having him disappoint in a way that wasn’t even like a splash, it was like a drop in the bucket.”
Another fan seated apart from the Wall had a yellow posterboard that read: “Pandemic P – we don’t love you like that. You can’t get no farewell tour. You not Kobe.” He held it aloft for much of the game instead of tucking it immediately away before George could see it, like those other fans did with their signage.
I don’t know if the guy with the yellow sign ever got on the Halo board, and I don’t really know know what to make of PG’s return. A deep, mixed bag, much like his Clippers tenure.