Was Paul George for SGA the Worst Trade in NBA History? | Group Chat | Ringer NBA

Was Paul George for SGA the Worst Trade in NBA History? | Group Chat | Ringer NBA

[Music] [Music] can I ask you this though so now I almost feel like we need to pour one out for for the Paul George era five years uh in with the Clippers so now that it’s practically said and done the price for George was Shay gilders Alexander which woof uh denil galinari was at that point as the kids might remember a solid player uh five first two swaps now on the face of it the the picks actually don’t seem that extreme because everyone has followed suit and paid pretty much the same price for it we got the Mel Bridges deal pretty recently that’s pretty similar package uh in terms of picks Shay obviously swings it completely the other direction because he’s uh uh in his prime 20 something MVP candidate uh did does this now seem like one of the worst deals of all time considering that you only got those precious 5 years with Paul George I feel like this was going to be the window I I you know I didn’t see the Paul George kawhai thing as being the Clippers forever and ever so much as here’s a concrete window of contention they kind of got that but also they were just kind of hurt the whole time and this is where obviously knowing everything we know now in particular about Shay you don’t do that deal as constructed that would be ridiculous but isn’t sheay living kind of almost the best version of his basketball trajectory from that point I I know I didn’t expect him to become an MVP clearly the Clippers didn’t expect to become nobody expected him to become an MVP guy for sure finished second in nobody thought this at the nobody so for him to get to this point is an incredible turn an incredible achievement not something that anyone could have banked on and so I understand even in retrospect why the Clippers rolled the dice the way they did it’s just in the Long View of History it’s going to look terrible because let not forget it was Paul George and Kawai Leonard at the time all the reporting was that kawh Leonard told them go out and do a deal or else I’m going to sign with the Lakers and I know there’s people just like oh he would have never played with LeBron and blah blah blah he’s not a coward blah it was just leverage whatever that’s what he told the Clippers so they did that deal because that’s what it took to get why Leonard coming off of a Finals MVP but this guy looked super human okay like it was it was a Nob brainer at the time like there was nobody arguing the idea first of all because they quote unquote stole him from the Lakers everybody loved that it was all Lakers incompetence all Lakers blah blah blah like they were kid everybody loved that part of it and then again you know these two incredible perimeter players who at the time everybody thought were you know basically two of the best perimeter guys in the league Paul George himself was coming off a finishing third in the MVP voting that year yeah like that’s the guy that they went out and get that’d be like trading for Luca or something right now okay like let’s ease up saying he’s the third he was the third MVP candidate this year not all third MVP candidates are created equal what I’m saying I’m just saying like at the time this was it was obvious that they should have done this like obvious and you know for most of that first season specifically everybody just knew the Clippers were going to win the championship every single media person you talk to everybody was just like oh the Clippers are un beable the Clippers are unstoppable I mean Marcus oh my God they added Marcus Morris it was bro that’s what it was I know it’s like it’s it’s in the past but I remember this moment because I was up there damn near every single game and boy if the Clippers Management wasn’t the most Shore people I’d ever seen in my life dude they were so satisfied with themselves and I think you know that regular season before the pandemic they did look like legitimately the best team in the NBA they looked dominant everything was working perfectly as if they designed it and then you know 31 lead got squandered kawh Leonard damn then never finishes another playoff series it’s just you know it is what it is so one of the worst deals in in NBA history I think we could all agree well who do we want to be like do we want to be the people who judge the trade now or that judge the trade on the night in the logic of that moment cuz I think in the moment Raz is Right A+ in retrospect C minus C given the given the outcomes that we know to be true yeah I I think yes I think a lot of people praise what they did and I think if you were to bring us back to that time they still do that although I will say there was some quibbling including in terms in like the building with the Clippers about whether or not they were paying too much to get there and like if you were to look back and say like what was kind of the defining error of the kawhai Paul George era uh it was kind of like bending over backward for stars that in a way that like really compromise how the team was run and doing so in a way that like even like most franchises wouldn’t and then obviously that extends to their ability to handle injuries and like how they approach that all of that and so like there’s that aspect to it too but man let me let me say this when you lose you almost always lose ugly and it almost always looks bad in retrospect what you gave up to get where you are if you can’t punch it all the way through the title and the Clippers didn’t really get close very often it’s going to look ugly but look at the Knicks trading for Mel Bridges that’s a lot to give up for Mel Bridges but guess what you get a great player the Sixers are about to commit a ton of money to Paul George the exact centerpiece of this Clippers team with all of his injury history even older five years older now than he was when he joined the clippers but you get Paul George and you get to content and so you have to give up to play at this level and sometimes you can’t even deliver on those terms but I just think whenever you lose whenever the the bottom on your team falls out whether you’re the Clippers who never quite got there whether you’re the Warriors who are kind of imploding with their you know historic core before our very eyes it always kind of goes ugly well now that it seems like the Sixers have Paul George uh we don’t know for sure but it seems like they are in air quotes the strong Front Runners this seems pretty fantastic I quietly the Celtics it was reported that kristofh porzingis might be out until next year like the calendar year 2025 and while still have clearly a lot in order to get by in in the interim I can’t remember a guy who missed half a season and then was just Gang Busters from there on out and the team like really made a go of it as a result of that so I’m like increasingly worried about their next season and so the do is kind of open in the East I mean we could talk about the Knicks with Bridges and and whatnot but I kind of think like as long as everyone’s healthy which is a big if and it’s probably one of the things we should talk about with the Paul George and embiid combo as to Paul George and Kawai but like if this works pretty nice extremely nice let’s say this about the Celtics though they’re coming in with a 14 game cushion over second place in the East based on what they had last season they just won a title without Chris ABS porzingis being anywhere near functional so if he’s even Mobile by the end of whatever their season is next year I think they’re going to be pretty freaking good now can they get the regular season well have to because Al Horford’s not playing 48 we know that so yeah OA brassette might have to play Big minutes if he returns like they’re going to need bodies to play the five or a way to fill those minutes to alleviate the fact that porzingis isn’t going to be there but yeah to to your ultimate Point here not only is the East overall going to be tougher next year but it’s going to be tougher on bigs it’s going to be tougher if you are Chris EPS porzingis you’re going to have to deal with Joel embiid with a reloaded team with Giannis coming at you with probably an improved team in Milwaukee with theck being better and more versatile than ever before and pulling you into the pick and roll and slicing and dicing you that way so it’s it’s looking like a much more formidable conference for sure they so seamlessly integrated Chris stabs those first two games into what they were doing after like in the NBA Finals y’all um I’m just not that worried about it like if he comes back and he’s reasonably healthy they don’t need him to play the whole regular season they could run up a great record um um without the guy I I don’t think I’m not I’m not worried about that the Celtics should be the favorites to come out of the East next year they’re the freaking jams um but yeah the Sixers I think are better than they were last year obviously it feels like they’ve completely upgraded um in in a way that’s like all the things that we’ve you know sort of derided uh Tobias Harris for never having done in his role as the third guy in Philly like Paul George is going to be so much better at all of that stuff at the shooting at the one1 shot creation just all of it the defense everything is just so much better um with Paul George in there but again as Justin mentioned this is a guy who he’s no Iron Man he’s not Mel Bridges playing 83 games in a season right like this guy is very often hurt Joel em be’s injury pass is well documented at this point uh but when they’re right they should feel like they have a as great a chance as anybody in the NBA to beat the Celtics next year and listen the Sixers if they do indeed get Paul George are now a big three and if you look across the NBA teams with big threes are having a lot of difficulty working in those fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh or eighth or ninth guys and so the the Sixers are going to be limited to what they could add around these guys they also added Andre Drummond two years 10 plus million I actually like that deal I think he’s like a perfectly credible backup for embiid and as we’ve seen embiid needs one of those guys to to spell him when he misses his inevitable 20 or so games uh and then they also signed Eric Gordon because God forbid they don’t sign a former rocket but like the margins it seems like matter more in the NBA as we’re seeing the Celtics being lock solid from one through seven made a huge difference the Nuggets goes on and on the Wolves just teams are deeper and and just better throughout the roster and so it’s going to be interesting because the Sixers are now a pivot to that and they are led by two guys who are going to miss games so those seams will show perhaps more than they would for three supremely healthy guys and they’re also going to have to replace everybody else right it would be one thing if you had these other kind of loadbearing pillars of your lineup but what’s going to happen with Kyle Lowry who’s going to be an attractive fre agent what’s going to happen with Kelly UB who turned out to be massively underpaid last season on the Sixers they really need guys like that to come in and we saw in Phoenix the diminishing returns when you have to go to bat every time with basically minimum salaries or bargain exceptions and where that can leave you as a team when you have to stack all those guys on top of each other so I think Drummond is a is a great start honestly like a good veteran backup and not only that but the kind of rebounder at the five like an actual rebounder at the five who lets you play smaller at the four when you need to so if Paul George is your full-time four or your part-time four you can get away with stuff like that when you have a backup like Drummond who is going to step in for beid for a meaningful amount of time

Justin, Rob, and Wos look back at the 2019 trade that sent superstar Paul George from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the L.A. Clippers for perennial MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Check out the Bill Simmons YouTube channel: youtube.com/billsimmons

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