What Can We Expect from Paul George's Potential Return to the Indiana Pacers?

As the Indiana Pacers continue their playoff push, the possibility of Paul George's return looms large in the background. 

George suffered a catastrophic broken leg in a Team USA scrimmage last summer. Although the Pacers were careful not to set hard, public timelines, outside doctors said this sort of injury often requires 12-18 months for a full recovery. It's been just over seven months since the injury, and George is once again on a basketball court.

Frank Vogel discussed George's progress this week, noting that he's participating in full practices and getting closer to game shape (h/t Jason Butt, CBSSports):

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He's practicing full-out now, I think he's done three or four practices now; he's not at full-strength yet so he's still got some hurdles to get past before he's able to get out on to the court and play in games. We're hopeful that that happens this year. We'll see how the next few weeks progress.

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Bleacher Report has also created a fantastic video series about the work George has put in to get back to this point.

From a team perspective, what can the Pacers expect from George once he's fully cleared by the medical staff?

At the time of George's injury, Nate Silver researched injury recovery rates at ESPN's FiveThirtyEight. He looked at players who had an All-Star caliber season and then played in 20 or fewer games the next season, due primarily to injury. His research found that the average recovery rate among those players was just 55 percent (meaning their production returned to 55 percent of its previous level).

That may sound bad for George and the Pacers, but Silver also found that things looked slightly rosier the younger the player was when he suffered his injury: 

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George recently turned 24. The regression line in the chart above implies that the average player who is injured at that age will come back to be 75 percent to 80 percent as productive as he was before. If George came back at 75 percent to 80 percent of his former self, that would not be such a bad outcome for the Pacers.

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To put that in perspective, George produced 10.8 Win Shares last season (per Basketball-Reference), the 12th highest total in the league. Seventy-five percent of that total would be 8.1 Win Shares, which would have ranked 24th in the league, about the same as Dwight Howard or Chris Bosh. 

That's obviously knocking the Pacers' one elite player down a few pegs, but it's not necessarily catastrophic.

All of that analysis addresses George's long-term recovery, which really is the primary concern for the Pacers. In the big picture, his future with this team is much more important than his present. However, the Pacers are pushing for a playoff spot and there is the question of what he could give them right now.

Issac Baldizon/Getty Images

Assuming he returns within the next two weeks, George would be playing anywhere from 15-20 games to finish out the season. To try to get a sense of what he might be ready to provide in that stretch, I adjusted Silver's study slightly.

I focused in on the seven players in his sample who were injured within the last decade. I then compared their production from the season before the injury to their production in the first 20 games of their return.

I also had to change metrics because Wins Above Replacement, which Silver used, is difficult to calculate at a game level. I used Game Score from Basketball-Reference, a metric built from the box score with an output similar to PER. Basketball-Reference's Glossary describes the scale like this, "The scale is similar to that of points scored, (40 is an outstanding performance, 10 is an average performance, etc.)."

Player	Injury Season	Pre-Injury Game Score	Post-Injury Game Score	% of Former Production
Kevin Love	2012-13	20.3	20.2	99.5%
Al Horford	2011-12	14.5	14.3	98.6%
Amare Stoudemire	2005-06	20.2	13.2	65.3%
Elton Brand	2007-08	17.6	11.1	63.1%
Gilbert Arenas	2007-08	20.1	12.6	62.7%
Mike Dunleavy	2008-09	14.1	6.8	48.2%
Derrick Rose	2012-13	16.6	7.4	44.6%

The average Game Score for these players in their first 20 games back from injury was about 68.9 percent of their average Game Score from the previous season. George's average Game Score last season was 15.5. Getting 68.9 percent of that production would put him at 10.7. 

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Even at that level, George would still be more productive than any of the eight most-played Pacers' this season.

Player	Average Game Score
Paul George	10.7
David West	10.3
Roy Hibbert	8.2
Rodney Stuckey	8.0
C.J. Watson	7.5
C.J. Miles	7.4
Luis Scola	7.0
Donald Sloan	7.0
Solomon Hill	6.6

Paul George averaged 21.7 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.9 steals on with a 55.5 True Shooting Percentage last season. prior to his injury. But projecting an individual stat line for his return is not as easy as taking my calculations here and reducing those numbers to 68 percent of last season's total.

It's more complicated because just looking at Game Score doesn't account for the changes in the different statistical categories embedded within. For example, we don't know if the decline seen by this injured players comes in shooting efficiency, more athletically-derived categories like rebounds and steals, or a mix.

More so than any individual numbers, George's versatility could really help the Pacers, even if the overall effectiveness is reduced.

The Pacers offense has actually been performing fairly well of late—scoring 106.4 points per 100 possessions since February 1, the fourth highest mark in the league over that stretch, per NBA.com. Still having another wing who can pass, shoot and create a little off the dribble just gives everyone else more breathing room. George may not immediately be the lockdown perimeter he was before, but he knows their system and should be able to function well within it regardless.

This is a messy, back-of-the-envelope calculation. Game Score is not a perfect measure of performance. The injured players we're comparing George to returned at the beginning of the next season, not during the middle of a season. They suffered various injuries, none identical to George's. There are all sorts of other variables unaccounted for.

Still, there is reason for optimism. This analysis implies that, if healthy, George could return and be an enormously useful piece for the Pacers as they fight to qualify for the playoffs this year, even as he's working to regain the full array of his abilities.

The future is murky and uncertain, but there is every reason to think George will still be a big and productive part of the Pacers moving forward.