Paul George: James Harden Will Fit 'Perfectly' With Clippers After 76ers Trade
The Los Angeles Clippers reportedly will start James Harden alongside Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Ivica Zubac on Monday night against the New York Knicks, and the plan apparently is to play him off the ball.
There are major question marks about how all of this will work, but George thinks it will take the Clippers to the next level.
"I think he's gonna fit in perfectly," he said on Podcast P with Paul George, which is presented by Wave Sports + Entertainment. "What I love about is all four of us [George, Harden, Leonard, Westbrook] are high-IQ players. We all know were everyone's supposed to be. ... Just watching him play—we watched him in practice—you just forget, like, he's a bucket. He made it look so easy. And I was just like, 'Damn, that's crazy,' adding that to this team now.' I haven't seen us throw that many lobs since I've been here."
George may be optimistic, but there are very legitimate reasons to question whether this core group of players makes sense together.
The most obvious starting point is that both Harden and Westbrook are ball-dominant guards, and Harden was literally just complaining about how he felt the Sixers kept him on a "leash" and didn't offer him the full creative freedom to play the game the way he saw fit.
And that was a situation where he was the predominant ball-handler and averaged an NBA-best 10.7 assists per game. How will he feel playing off the ball, if that indeed is the route head coach Tyronn Lue intends to go?
It's not like Westbrook can effectively play off the ball, given his limitations as a shooter. This brings up another point—this proposed starting 5 has awful floor spacing, with Westbrook and Zubac sharing the court.
Harden is at his best running isolation offense or the pick-and-roll with four shooters around him, opening up driving lanes and allowing him to either attack the rim, dish or hit his patented step-back three. That offensive approach doesn't work with this proposed starting five.
"Honestly, I don't know if James fits anywhere—like any team," a scout told The Athletic's Sam Amick. "And I don't know how this fit is going to be. Maybe it'll work out when the Clippers are injured and they have him playing instead of Kawhi. But for me, in the last couple of years watching James, I don't think he has the same finishing ability. He doesn't shoot the ball as well. He doesn't have the same ability to get to the hole."
And then there's the question of four players, all accomplished isolation scorers throughout their careers, navigating late-game situations. The pecking order should absolutely have Leonard and George at the top, but the instinct for Westbrook to go into attack mode or Harden to take the air out of the ball and wave all four players to the corners while he dribbles down the shot clock before making a move may be hard to quell.
"I just don't see how they blend together because (Harden's) taking shots away from somebody—unless it's just a security blanket of 'We have not been healthy for the last three years and this at least gives us Russ and James on games where we don't have Kawhi and Paul,'" that scout added.
One logical option is to bring Westbrook off the bench as the sixth man, let him cook with the added freedom he would have running the second-team offense and start Norman Powell or Terance Mann (when he's healthy) instead. In that scenario, Harden could be the primary ball-handler with the starters and Westbrook could run the offense with the second unit.
It was a role Westbrook played for the Lakers last season before he was traded, though with the Clippers he's been the starting point guard. It may not be easy to put that genie back in the bottle.
But for the Clippers to work, more than one person is going to have to swallow their ego and make sacrifices. It's a lot for Lue to navigate. George is a believer, but outside of Los Angeles, doubts exist.
