Paul George Is Both the Lowest- and Highest-Expectation Max Free Agent Signing Ever

We are asking less of Paul George than maybe any team has ever asked of their huge star free-agent signing. All he has to do is redeem the last 11 years of Sixers basketball.

It was the right move. I know that, even if I have mixed feelings about it. Paul George is expensive, imperfect, occasionally infuriating, and on the way out of his prime -- but he's also a seven-time All-Star (named one as recently as last season), an unmistakable two-way player, and an ideal fit in between our two current franchise anchors. There's just no way we were getting anyone else this good, this quickly, this simply, and at no cost to the team (other than, y'know, the great majority of our available money and cap space). Now Tim Bontemps is calling us on par with the Celtics if healthy, saying that we have easily the best Big Three in the league -- and even though my reflex is to chuckle at the instant-reaction hyperbole, he's kinda inarguably right. It's basically a perfect free-agent signing. 

It's kind of a weird feeling, though, isn't it? On one hand, we got our third star, the one Daryl Morey has spent years maneuvering for -- both in the broad, big-picture sense, and in the much more direct sense that he was very openly telegraphing his interest in Paul George specifically for the entirety of last season, if not far longer. But on the other hand, it IS Paul George, a player everyone agrees is good but no one is particularly inspired by. We fist-pump and chest-puff and talk shit on Twitter this week because we basically won free agency, getting in all likelihood the biggest guy to change teams this offseason, and moving the Sixers back to the inner circle of title contenders after a first-round exit this postseason.

But are we, like, psyched to watch Paul George play basketball? To learn all the little things you only discover about a player's game and personality when you watch them play 65 to 70 times a season? To have to pay attention to the shit he says on his podcast? I dunno -- maybe sorta, but also kinda not totally really at all. That's just not the kind of star he is. He's not an electric scorer or a magical playmaker or a stupefying athlete or a transcendent defender or even a jump-into-the-fifth-row gamer. He's just a great player who does nearly all of the skill things that winning teams are in most perpetual need of players to do. 

And this sorta gets at the inherent contradiction with Paul George as the Sixers' big free agent signing: He's the guy, but he's not really the guy. He might end up being the 76ers' most important player acquisition since Moses Malone -- and we're paying him more than either Luka or Giannis are getting next year -- but we only got him to be a third option, a connector, a missing piece. We don't ultimately need that much from him. Just to save the Sixers and redeem the entirety of The Process. 

It's a particular combination I don't ever remember from a huge A-list free agent signing before: one who isn't really expected to change the makeup or direction of a team, but who still is an absolute make-or-break player for the entire franchise. If $212.5 million man OG Anunoby doesn't pan out for the Knicks over the next couple years, that's probably fine -- they can move off his contract and still retool in time to still properly take advantage of Jalen Brunson's prime. There's no huge rush, there's no major urgency, no real immediate pressure on him to be the difference-maker. And not to bring up unpleasant memories, but we just lived through five years of a guy making near-max money to be our third option who underperformed consistently, and we still stayed pretty competitive throughout and never even got particularly close to dealing him. That's usually how these big contracts go when the guy busts: They slow your team down, but they don't totally stop it, and they certainly don't sink you permanently. 

Not Paul George, though: This guy has to put the Sixers over the top. Worse, he basically has to do it right away -- because at his age, every year he doesn't do it, it becomes progressively less likely he'll do it the next one. And if he's not the guy to do it, then by the time that becomes clear to the Sixers, it'll be just as clear to the other 29 NBA teams, who won't necessarily relish taking on $50 to $60 million a year of our increasingly dead weight. Then the dominoes start to fall, and before you know it, Joel Embiid is 32 years old, with a non-contending supporting cast and a player option for the final year of his deal, and we're inches away from it all being over, like, for real. There's no backup plan this time: We have some picks and some cap space and some room to fill out the roster around our newly minted Big Three, but if Paul George isn't living up to his end of the triangle, none of the rest of it really matters. He needs to be the guy we need him to be. 

But being the guy we need him to be? Seems pretty doable! We don't need 2014 Paul George-caliber production -- hell, we might not even need 2024 Paul George-caliber production. We don't need him to be a primary ball-handler, a first or second scoring option, a defensive anchor, or a closer (though sporadic assistance on that last one would undoubtedly be appreciated). We don't even need him to be an All-Star; frankly, we should probably hope he isn't an All-Star next year, since that'd likely mean he was pushed into greater offensive duty after an injury to Embiid or Tyrese Maxey. MOC laid out what we do need from Paul George pretty perfectly over the weekend: hit catch and shoot 3s, attack close-outs, run around off the ball, and don't get picked on defensively. That's it. 19/5/4 on good shooting percentages, a low turnover rate and a sturdy plus/minus and we're gonna be pleased as punch with our new third star. It's kind of a startlingly small amount of production to ask for of a guy who we're making one of the league's dozen highest-paid players. 

Let Yourself Enjoy This One

And that's really why this move was ultimately such a no-brainer for Daryl to make. We're getting a future hall-of-famer who's been a great player for over a decade -- and the exact kind of great player that we could most use on this team between Joel and Tyrese -- and we can probably still get away with him merely being very good. We don't need him to step up his game on one side of the ball for us like Brandon Ingram, we don't need him to play nice and change his game for us like Jimmy Butler, we don't need him to actively take a back seat in ways he never has before for us like LeBron James. The only thing we need from Paul George is to be about 75% of the player he was at his best. That's truly the full extent of it. When you're playing the free agency game, there are no totally safe bets -- it's all calculated risk. But when you're betting on a player to just be a slightly diminished form of who they've always been, that's the closest thing to a sure thing you're gonna get. 

Of course, the safety of the bet doesn't make it any more exciting. We're not going to be watching Paul George expecting that he gives us the kind of play we've never seen on this team before, Rather, we'll just be hoping that he gives us enough of the simple stuff we haven't seen reliably enough from our third-option wings over the years to allow our main guys up high and down low to be their exhilarating, intoxicating, world-beating selves. If he can do that, this will almost certainly end up being the best Sixers roster of the entire Joel Embiid era, and the one with the highest chance of legitimately competing for a championship. And if he can't do that, we will soon know disappointment, heartbreak and overall desolation like we, even as Sixers fans, have never felt before. No pressure, PG. 

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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