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Clippers: Paul George & Kawhi Leonard’s team up was years in the making

By Ryan Snellings

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 24: Kawhi Leonard #2 and Paul George #13 of the LA Clippers look on on October 24, 2019 at Chase Center in San Francisco, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2019 NBAE (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 24: Kawhi Leonard #2 and Paul George #13 of the LA Clippers look on on October 24, 2019 at Chase Center in San Francisco, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2019 NBAE (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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Paul George and Kawhi Leonard teaming up for the LA Clippers was apparently a long time in the making after George said he attempted it before.

Well Clipper Nation, we really lucked out. According to Paul George himself, the LA Clippers star already tried once to team up with Kawhi Leonard, but it did not work out.

Ahead of tonight’s game versus the Boston Celtics, ESPN has reported that George asked to be dealt to the San Antonio Spurs during the summer of 2017. His goal? To team up with Kawhi. The Spurs didn’t have the pieces necessary to make a trade work and the rest is history.

George was sent to the Oklahoma City Thunder for two seasons and was then traded from there to the Clippers in a blockbuster deal at the request of Kawhi. According to George, the two actually met days before free agency to figure out how this team-up would go down.

The fact that George and Leonard already tried to team up once is extremely interesting. No one around the league prior to this summer would have thought the two had any relationship nor desire to play together, especially considering how much their skill sets overlap. Obviously it was not an issue to the two of them though and both look likely to finally take the court together tonight for the first time.

Another interesting tidbit from the ESPN article is the fact that the Lakers not trying hard to trade for George in 2017 weighed on his decision to re-sign with the Thunder in 2018.

"“As far as the Lakers, I wanted to go to L.A.,” George says. “They didn’t make that happen. They didn’t put nothing together. So that’s in the back of my mind [when I became a free agent]. That was in the back of my mind.”"

Since he’s now a member of Clipper Nation, it’s nice to see that George holds a little anger towards the Lakers franchise. He has seemingly embraced being a Clipper since day one, wearing Clippers gear in almost every image or video we saw of him.

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The two should take the court together tonight finally, making this team up finall a reality.

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