LA Clippers: 3 ways the Paul George trade altered the franchise’s future

The LA Clippers traded for Paul George about 26 months ago, and I’m pleased with the results.

George has continued to be a star in this league for the Clips, and is the third-best player in this city. He’s also recently been making strides on the type of postseason player he is, which was one of his bigger areas of concern coming into LA.

Now that we put a great team out there this year, and now that we are building our own incredible arena, everything’s been reminding me of how far we’ve come as a franchise since PG13 has been over here. The move has been a genius one, and one that has altered the future of this franchise. We don’t come this far without the PG trade.

No. 3 way the Paul George trade altered the LA Clippers franchise’s future: It’s saved us from a potentially lost season

Everybody knows that Paul George is a great player. I bet even the biggest LA Clippers haters even know it deep down.

But what if there was no PG heading into this season? If we don’t trade for PG, we’re theoretically going with this starting five:

PG/SG: Reggie Jackson

PG/SG: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

SF: Nicolas Batum

PF: Marcus Morris Sr.

C: Serge Ibaka

Not awful, but that lineup might not even be a top eight team in the West with how good the conference still is. With no Kawhi Leonard for much of the year, this team may have a bad record by the time he gets back, and would likely get a pretty poor playoff seed.

Since the Clips traded for PG, the team will be competing for a Western Conference championship again, however. This team would lack major star power this season if he wasn’t here. Kawhi’s injury is much less painful with George over here.