OKC Thunder Season Review: Paul George’s MVP-caliber season

Paul George had one of the more complicated seasons in recent OKC Thunder memory. Here’s why.

I honestly don’t remember Paul George doing anything like what he did this season for the OKC Thunder. There were some moments here and there where he looked like one of the best wings in the league, but nothing even remotely close to what he did this season.

Right up until the All-Star break – as I’m sure you know by now – he was one of the best players in the league. George was the engine behind the team’s surprisingly above-average offense and one of the most important pieces of their vaunted defense. And for a player who, up to this season, had been an elite, yet a maddeningly inconsistent, second option, his ascension into the MVP conversations was legitimately startling.

Prior to injuring his rotator cuff, he was the main reason that the OKC Thunder established themselves as potential contenders to Golden State’s throne. Where their offense had always been unreliable and shaky in the past, George gave them a release valve they could go to when things started to get tight or their main ball-handlers started to break down. He provided a sense of stability that the team sorely missed since Kevin Durant left in 2015-2016.

But when a seemingly minor injury threw him off his game heading into the All-Star break, everything started to fall apart for both the Thunder as a whole and George himself.

With that said, here’s why the Thunder found themselves relying on him so much, how he got in that position in the first place, and where everybody goes from here.