Lakers didn’t shoot their shot with Paul George, and now they have nothing
By Josh Hill
Last year the Lakers baulked at the idea of giving up anything for Paul George, and now they’re left holding an empty bag.
Things don’t always go the way they’re supposed to, even in the land of make-believe. A year ago, Magic Johnson went on national late night television and essentially laughed off the idea that Paul George would be playing anywhere other than Los Angeles in 2018. Nothing seemed to stand in the way of George signing with the Lakers this summer, not even a trade to Oklahoma City which seemed to more or less seal his fate.
An unexpected plot twist was George signing a four-year max contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder, which he agreed to do at 12:01 a.m. on July 1. That wasn’t how this Hollywood story was supposed to go.
One year to the day after the Lakers smugly laughed off George being traded to the Thunder, the front office in L.A. is left holding an empty bag. We don’t know the extent to which this domino effect will shackle the Lakers, but there wasn’t a more horrible way to start free agency.
Everything is different.
With George staying in OKC, the pressure to trade for Kawhi Leonard just hit critical mass. It already appeared that San Antonio held most of the leverage in trade talks, and with George out of the question they can press their boot heel into the Lakers throats even harder.
Most of that has to do with LeBron James, another moving piece we now have to wonder if L.A. is his best destination. Not landing Kawhi all but assures that LeBron won’t be signing there. George signing for another year wouldn’t have totally killed LeBron’s incentive to come to Los Angeles and wait a year, but the two other years George signed on for in OKC does. Barring a trade, there’s no chance George teams up with LeBron anywhere other than with the Thunder.
Which brings us to another piece of egg on the front office’s face: trade value. For fans put off by the smugness of the Lakers running out the clock on George’s free agency, this is perhaps the sweetest of all. From the time George announced he wasn’t re-signing with Indiana through his entire first season with the Thunder, Lakers brass tapped their watches and laughed. Why trade assets for a guy you could sign without giving any up; that was the gameplan and it appeared foolproof. Now the only fools are the ones in L.A. who will have to trade more assets than they otherwise might have before if they want to land George.
Los Angeles could go from being sure-fire landing spots for George, Kawhi, and LeBron to missing out on all three in the span of a week. That’s just embarrassing, and there are few other ways to put it.
People a lot smarter than me are going to break this whole mess down more thoroughly over the next week. But it doesn’t take a deep dive to see this as potentially ending up as one of the worst front office bunglings of all-time.