![]() One of those criteria: make two All-NBA teams. Under the terms of the new CBA, George will be eligible for a special raise available to players who achieve one of three lofty criteria over their first four seasons. The Pacers have to hope it is, after handing George an unprecedented five-year max contract before the season that makes George their one-time-only “designated player.” As they negotiated the deal, both sides understood that George could play his way into more money this season. The results have been fantastic so far, though there are hints that the full package might not be totally sustainable. If the ball bounced to that level, Powell would swipe it away and have George start over. This summer was all about staying low.” George’s trainer, Jerry Powell, would shadow George through ballhandling drills, with Powell holding his hand at the height he considered the healthy upper limit of George’s dribble. “I knew how to dribble,” George says, “but I was always dribbling too high. A boost there would allow George to stay in a low crouch more consistently when dribbling through defenses. He ran the hills in Southern California’s Runyon Canyon in hopes of increasing the strength and endurance in his legs. George spent all summer working on his sloppy ballhandling. He was so out of control trying to split traps on the play that Vogel banned him from trying. Out of 120 players who ran at least 75 pick-and-rolls, only 22 lost the ball more often. He turned over the ball on 22.7 percent of his pick-and-rolls, per Synergy Sports. Just a year ago, George looked like he was in over his head assuming Granger’s alpha dog perimeter spot in Indiana’s balanced, post-heavy offense. For George to be scoring so efficiently with the turnover profile of a shoot-first type is remarkable. The other is a devastating post scorer whose job is to finish. ![]() One is a midrange gunner who lacks George’s commitment to passing and defense. ![]() Only two players leaguewide soaked up such a large portion of their team’s possessions last season while turning the ball over so rarely: Carmelo Anthony and Brook Lopez. George has used nearly 29 percent of Indiana’s possessions so far, and coughed the ball up on just 12 percent of those possessions. And most encouraging of all, George is using a much larger slice of Indiana’s possessions to create his own offense, and he has managed that without the kind of hike in turnovers he suffered last season when he picked up Danny Granger’s slack. He’s playing the best defense of his career, both as an on-ball menace and as a help defender capable of crashing into the paint and darting back out to challenge a shooter without losing his pinpoint balance. He’s eighth overall in player efficiency rating after finishing tied for 87th (with Jason Smith!) last season. Perhaps no one more than George himself, who has come jetting out of the gates this season as one of the half-dozen best all-around players in the league. “Everybody seems to have taken it to heart.” “I just spoke up,” George says as he recalls the scene, which unfolded in front of head coach Frank Vogel and the team’s full coaching and training staff. As the Pacers huddled in the visiting locker room of AmericanAirlines Arena, trying to digest a painful and ugly Game 7 loss in the conference finals, Paul George delivered a message to his teammates: Everybody had to come back next season having made a major improvement to at least one part of their game.
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