Paul George arrives in Boston with a different kind of spotlight on him now. He’s no longer the expensive free-agent prize.
He’s no longer being sold as the missing piece. He’s the name at the center of the “underwhelming return” for Jaylen Brown, and that alone has shaped the conversation around his arrival.
That framing is harsh, but it also misses the basketball part. However messy the transaction looks on paper, George can still help when he’s actually on the floor.
“Paul’s a really good player,” Brad Stevens said in a behind-the-scenes video released by the team. “We’re excited to get a chance to work with him … he’s been a really good player for a long time. He’s one of the more impactful players with regard to winning, even as he’s aged, in the NBA.”
That’s the balancing act for Boston. Brown is the better player.
That part isn’t up for debate. But the Celtics moved off a player who no longer fit their long-term plans and brought in someone who, at least for now, can still fill a useful role in a winning setup.
“We just think he’s a good fit for how we play,” Stevens said in the video. “And I think the other part about Paul is, he’s very smart.
He has a good feel for the game. He’s got a good savvy to him about the game.
And I think that fits in with the rest of our lineup.”
The biggest question is simple: how much of him will Boston actually get?
Availability is the first thing that hangs over George’s season. With 16 back-to-backs on the schedule, the most games he can possibly play is 66, and that assumes no injuries at all.
That’s not the way to bet. His recent track record says the Celtics will have to manage him carefully, and once anything starts barking, they’ll be extremely conservative with the recovery.
Think Kristaps Porzingis-level caution, not “play through it” toughness.
That could leave George somewhere in the 50s in games played, and for the first time since his first two seasons in the league, it could also mean fewer than 30 minutes per game. Boston has the depth to survive that.
The point isn’t to squeeze every regular-season minute out of him. It’s to get him to the postseason fresh and healthy, with a chance to look like the version that gave Boston so much trouble in last year’s playoffs.
And that version still matters.
Last season, according to Synergy Sports, George posted 1.173 points per possession compared to Brown’s .909. In isolation, George was at 1.045 PPP, while Brown came in at 0.996.
The biggest edge came in spot-ups, where George was in the 92nd percentile at 1.246 PPP. That was the largest share of his offense.
Brown, by comparison, spotted up just 14% of the time and produced 1 point per possession, which ranked in the 46th percentile.
The shooting numbers explain a lot of that. George hit 39.2% from three last season and is a 38.4% career three-point shooter. Brown shot 34.7% from deep last season and sits at 35.8% for his career.
That difference matters because Brown was asked to be a different kind of player for Boston last season. Asking him to morph into more of a spot-up threat again this year would have been a tall order for a star coming off his best season.
George, for however long this lasts, actually fits the job description. The Celtics chose to build around Tatum as the lone star, so they needed someone who could slide into a specific role.
George can do that.
His season should feature a lot of catch-and-shoot chances, but he can still bend into pick-and-roll action or create in isolation when needed, and he remains effective in those spots. He’s not the All-Defensive team force he once was, but he can still dig in and defend when the moment calls for it.
Will he change everything? No.
Is he Jaylen Brown? Not remotely.
But in the minutes he’s out there, he can still be a useful player for Boston.
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