The Thunder are swinging for the fences with the Paul George trade
By Jared Dubin
For the second straight year, Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti has pulled off the most surprising trade of the early offseason. Last year, he sent Serge Ibaka packing during the draft, flipping him to Orlando for Victor Oladipo and the rights to Domantas Sabonis. Just before the start of free agency on Friday evening, Presti sent the exact same package he got from the Magic over to the Pacers, and got Paul George in return.
Oladipo signed an extension for four years and $84 million prior to last season. Oladipo then started next to Russell Westbrook in the backcourt all year and fared… fine. He shot better on 3-pointers than he had at any point in his career, but was inconsistent defensively and showed little effectiveness on the ball. Sabonis began the year as the team’s starting power forward and got off to a scorching start shooting the ball, but he eventually tailed off and by the end of the year was coming off the bench. He got three straight DNP-CDs in Oklahoma City’s final three games of the year.
Meanwhile, Paul George is Paul Freaking George. The Thunder win this trade on its face. It’s almost preposterous how little the Pacers got for George, considering the kind of offers they reportedly had on the table for him at the deadline — one of which included the Nets’ first-round pick, which eventually became the No. 1 overall selection. Oladipo is a nice player and Sabonis has potential, but again; this exact package was used to get Serge Ibaka last year, and now it landed Paul George — a borderline top-10 player in the league — for OKC. Not only that, but the Thunder actually decreased their payroll by $3,841,042 in this deal, giving them a bit more wiggle room under the luxury tax with which to re-sign Andre Roberson or Taj Gibson. I’m surprised Presti isn’t Periscoping himself running naked through the streets of Oklahoma City right now.
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Still, despite the fact that the trade is a clear win, there is also a decent amount of risk involved.
George has only one year remaining on his contract and it’s an open secret that wants to play for the Lakers. He can’t sign an extension with the Thunder until six months after the completion of this trade, which actually can’t be happen until the moratorium ends on July 6 because of the poison pill provision in Oladipo’s extension. That means George can’t be extended until January 6. And he’s not going to extend at that point anyway because the Thunder won’t have the cap room to renegotiate him up to the level of his max deal, meaning any extension he took would represent a steep discount. That means this is a pure one-season rental, with Oklahoma City betting the experience of that one season can convince George to return to play with Russell Westbrook, Steven Adams, and… well, some other guys.
The main issue there — other than Oklahoma City being very far (in more ways than one) from Los Angeles — is that Westbrook can become a free agent next offseason as well. He signed a one-plus-one extension this time last year so that he could hit unrestricted free agency after his 10th season in the league rather than his ninth and thus be eligible for a starting salary equal to 35 percent of the cap. When the league added the Designated Veteran Extension into the new CBA, it grandfathered Westbrook’s (and James Harden’s) eligibility; so he’s actually able to sign a five-year, $201 million extension right now if he wants it. The Thunder will offer that extension, but Westbrook is not expected to sign it right away.
This is a team that lost the second-best player in the league (that Durant guy) and got nothing in return. Losing another top-10 player for nothing would be catastrophic for the franchise. So if the Thunder hadn’t traded for George, Westbrook not signing the extension right away would be a blinking neon sign that they need to look into trading him. That’s certainly not going to happen now, though, and thus begins the Thunder’s yearlong quest to convince the two best players on the team to stay in Oklahoma City long-term. How this season shakes out will go a long way toward deciding whether they can actually do it.
Westbrook and George make for a hyper-intriguing combination on the floor. There is perhaps no player in the league more able to get any shot at any time than Russ; but while his 2016-17 season was a masterpiece of individual achievement, he likely handled too large a burden within the offense. Having George as the second perimeter creator on the team as opposed to Oladipo will do a lot to ease that burden.
George is smack-dab in the middle of his prime at 27 years old and he’s coming off the best shooting season of his career. He’s never played next to an individual talent like Westbrook, and he should get more open looks next season than he ever has before. He’s not quite Durant’s equal as an individual talent, but nobody is. George is a strong weapon both on and off the ball, which should help loosen things up for a Thunder offense that got badly cramped far too often last season. Having George on the wing will do a ton to revive those Westbrook-to-Adams lobs we used to see all the time, for example.
The presence of George will also help keep the Thunder offense afloat whenever Westbrook hits the bench, assuming Billy Donovan has learned to stagger the minutes of his stars. (A dangerous assumption, to be sure.) Oklahoma City scored 107.9 points per 100 possessions with Westbrook on the court last season, the full-year equivalent of the 10th-best offense in the league. When Westbrook sat, their scoring rate plummeted to 97.4 points per 100, three-plus points worse than the worst offense in basketball. George has proven himself capable of handling a whole lot of minutes as the single offensive star on the floor. He’ll surely be able to nudge that number up to a respectable level.
A defense based around the size and length of George, Adams, Roberson, and Jerami Grant (assuming the Thunder elect to re-sign Roberson over Gibson) should be hell for teams to score on as well. OKC finished 10th in defensive efficiency last season. George is one of the best perimeter defenders in basketball and should push them higher no matter what. He’s a fully operational wing stopper, capable of checking the best scorers in the league night after night. But the Thunder have the luxury of not needing him to do that all the time. When he plays with Roberson, George can check the less threatening wing player during some stretches, allowing him to conserve the energy necessary to help Westbrook carry the offense. George’s two-way brilliance could even allow the Thunder to start sharp-shooting Alex Abrines instead of Roberson, using the lengthy perimeter hound as a sort of co-sixth man with post-up big man Enes Kanter (assuming they don’t find a taker for Kanter’s contract at some point this offseason).
The Thunder will also use the mid-level exception to add even more talent. Reports have them looking into Rudy Gay and even Zach Randolph. If they can get one of them to sign on for the taxpayer mid-level starting at $5.192 million rather than the non-taxpayer mid-level of $8.406 million, that would go a long way toward keeping Clay Bennett’s wallet heavy. Gay seems like a better fit because the Thunder already have their back-to-the-basket big off the bench and don’t necessarily have a combo forward that could swing between both spots alongside George, but he’s coming off an Achilles injury. Either way, adding another potential impact player will help round out the squad and go a long way toward convincing George and Westbrook that OKC provides the best opportunity for them to win over the next several years.
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Is the team the Thunder are assembling better than the juggernaut Warriors? Of course not. But all the Thunder really need to do is convince those guys that it’s better than whoever else can sign them next July. By pairing George and Russ together, they’re much farther along that path than they were before. If one or both elect to leave there will not be much of a team left over. (The two of them heading to L.A. together is pretty much the worst-case scenario.) But well, at least they’ll have tried to pull out all the stops this time around.