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NBA scout: Indiana's Paul George has potential to be top-3 player
Sean Deveney Sporting News Follow on Twitter Archive Email RSS
Paul George has been moving closer to signing a five-year maximum contract with the Pacers in recent weeks, and on Wednesday, he guaranteed to The Indianapolis Star that the deal would be done before the season starts. Given the way George has played in his first three seasons this comes as no surprise, and depending on George’s health, the Pacers won’t regret this contract.
How good can George be? Says one East scout: “He can be a Top 5, maybe even a Top 3 type of player. He still has so much raw talent, and he was a late bloomer so you can see he still plays on instinct sometimes. He is far from a finished product. He will be a great player, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that we’re talking about Scottie Pippen great, not Michael Jordan great. He could be a lot like Pippen, but to get there, he has a lot to do, a lot of work. He can be elite, but he has to plug up some big holes in his game."
The thing about George is that those holes are relatively obvious, the kinds of things players can learn with experience and repetition. He arrived in Indiana out of Fresno State four years ago, and at the time, he was still a raw but athletic prospect, a guy who had not been heavily recruited out of high school. He could create space and put down jaw-dropping dunks, but basics like footwork, dribbling, perimeter shooting and floor vision were not in his game.
He is still developing those fundamentals. And he knows it.
“I know where I want to be as a player, and I know I have a long way to go to get there,” George said. “I am not close to where I want to be. But I think I understand how hard I have to work to get there and I am willing to do that.”
Look closely at George’s production from last year, and three numbers in particular crop up, each showing something George needs to improve to reach his full potential:
0.77
That, according to Syngery Sports, is the points per possession George recorded working out of post-up situations last year, and for a guy who is 6-8 with George’s athletic ability, that is just not nearly enough. George has not made the post a priority in his offensive repertoire, as only 5.7 percent of his possessions came out of the post and he shot only 27.8 percent from 3-10 feet. All of that is a reflection of two things: one, that the Pacers have a pair of solid post-up big men, Roy Hibbert and David West, and, two, the fact that George still needs to add some strength in order to hold his own on the block.
Anyone who watched George try to defend LeBron James in the post in the Eastern Conference finals last year will remember that James was able to muscle George to his preferred spots repeatedly, and George’s defense in the post is also a work in progress. He allowed .896 points per possession in the post last year, which ranks about average in the league, but that is a big improvement from the previous season, when he allowed 1.128 ppp—one of the worst. George still needs to learn and refine a couple of credible post moves offensively, but more important is just the addition of strength and heft.
35.4
That is George’s shooting percentage from 16 feet on out to the 3-point line, and if George has any chance of joining the league’s elite, he will need to improve his shooting from that range. His shooting percentage from that area is up from 31.1 percent the year before, but consider that Kevin Durant shoots 42.9 percent from 16 feet out, and James shoots 44.4 percent. That’s where George needs to be.
George has long been effective as a spot-up shooter (he registered 1.029 points per possession on spot-ups last year). Even before he builds up a post-up game (as James has done), improving the midrange jumper off the dribble is a must for George. “That is something I focused on last year,” George said. “That hasn’t changed, I still want to be a better shooter.”
21.6
George Hill is not a pure point guard for the Pacers, so Indiana often puts the ball into the hands of George in high screen-and-rolls as a way of initiating the offense. In all, 15.8 percent of George’s possessions featured him as the ballhandler, which is a good idea in theory—George’s athleticism makes him a serious threat to attack the basket and forces the defense to collapse into the paint.
The problem is that George does not get to the rim enough, and these pick-and-rolls are not especially efficient. When you include pick-and-rolls in which he passes, the plays create only 0.789 points per possession, which is below average. (James, by way of comparison, averaged 1.046 ppp out of the pick-and-roll, and Durant averaged 1.017.) George must be better on pick-and-rolls, first by scoring himself more efficiently—getting to the free-throw line more than 3.5 times per game would be a good start—so that he attracts more attention from opponents, which in turn will allow him to find teammates for easier shots.
That can be addressed, in part, through better ballhandling. George is somewhat predictable in the way he handles, and he can be counted on to commit turnovers, which happened on 21.8 percent of his pick-and-roll possessions last year. That’s around the same percentage as James and Durant, but remember, those two are 30-point-per-game scorers. They’re Michael Jordans. If George is to reach his potential as a Pippen-type player, he will have to develop enough command of the ball to make running the offense through him a worthwhile idea.
NBA scout: Indiana's Paul George has potential to be top-3 player
Sean Deveney Sporting News Follow on Twitter Archive Email RSS
Paul George has been moving closer to signing a five-year maximum contract with the Pacers in recent weeks, and on Wednesday, he guaranteed to The Indianapolis Star that the deal would be done before the season starts. Given the way George has played in his first three seasons this comes as no surprise, and depending on George’s health, the Pacers won’t regret this contract.
How good can George be? Says one East scout: “He can be a Top 5, maybe even a Top 3 type of player. He still has so much raw talent, and he was a late bloomer so you can see he still plays on instinct sometimes. He is far from a finished product. He will be a great player, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that we’re talking about Scottie Pippen great, not Michael Jordan great. He could be a lot like Pippen, but to get there, he has a lot to do, a lot of work. He can be elite, but he has to plug up some big holes in his game."
The thing about George is that those holes are relatively obvious, the kinds of things players can learn with experience and repetition. He arrived in Indiana out of Fresno State four years ago, and at the time, he was still a raw but athletic prospect, a guy who had not been heavily recruited out of high school. He could create space and put down jaw-dropping dunks, but basics like footwork, dribbling, perimeter shooting and floor vision were not in his game.
He is still developing those fundamentals. And he knows it.
“I know where I want to be as a player, and I know I have a long way to go to get there,” George said. “I am not close to where I want to be. But I think I understand how hard I have to work to get there and I am willing to do that.”
Look closely at George’s production from last year, and three numbers in particular crop up, each showing something George needs to improve to reach his full potential:
0.77
That, according to Syngery Sports, is the points per possession George recorded working out of post-up situations last year, and for a guy who is 6-8 with George’s athletic ability, that is just not nearly enough. George has not made the post a priority in his offensive repertoire, as only 5.7 percent of his possessions came out of the post and he shot only 27.8 percent from 3-10 feet. All of that is a reflection of two things: one, that the Pacers have a pair of solid post-up big men, Roy Hibbert and David West, and, two, the fact that George still needs to add some strength in order to hold his own on the block.
Anyone who watched George try to defend LeBron James in the post in the Eastern Conference finals last year will remember that James was able to muscle George to his preferred spots repeatedly, and George’s defense in the post is also a work in progress. He allowed .896 points per possession in the post last year, which ranks about average in the league, but that is a big improvement from the previous season, when he allowed 1.128 ppp—one of the worst. George still needs to learn and refine a couple of credible post moves offensively, but more important is just the addition of strength and heft.
35.4
That is George’s shooting percentage from 16 feet on out to the 3-point line, and if George has any chance of joining the league’s elite, he will need to improve his shooting from that range. His shooting percentage from that area is up from 31.1 percent the year before, but consider that Kevin Durant shoots 42.9 percent from 16 feet out, and James shoots 44.4 percent. That’s where George needs to be.
George has long been effective as a spot-up shooter (he registered 1.029 points per possession on spot-ups last year). Even before he builds up a post-up game (as James has done), improving the midrange jumper off the dribble is a must for George. “That is something I focused on last year,” George said. “That hasn’t changed, I still want to be a better shooter.”
21.6
George Hill is not a pure point guard for the Pacers, so Indiana often puts the ball into the hands of George in high screen-and-rolls as a way of initiating the offense. In all, 15.8 percent of George’s possessions featured him as the ballhandler, which is a good idea in theory—George’s athleticism makes him a serious threat to attack the basket and forces the defense to collapse into the paint.
The problem is that George does not get to the rim enough, and these pick-and-rolls are not especially efficient. When you include pick-and-rolls in which he passes, the plays create only 0.789 points per possession, which is below average. (James, by way of comparison, averaged 1.046 ppp out of the pick-and-roll, and Durant averaged 1.017.) George must be better on pick-and-rolls, first by scoring himself more efficiently—getting to the free-throw line more than 3.5 times per game would be a good start—so that he attracts more attention from opponents, which in turn will allow him to find teammates for easier shots.
That can be addressed, in part, through better ballhandling. George is somewhat predictable in the way he handles, and he can be counted on to commit turnovers, which happened on 21.8 percent of his pick-and-roll possessions last year. That’s around the same percentage as James and Durant, but remember, those two are 30-point-per-game scorers. They’re Michael Jordans. If George is to reach his potential as a Pippen-type player, he will have to develop enough command of the ball to make running the offense through him a worthwhile idea.
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