Thunderous Intentions
Fansided

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

By Noah Schulte

OKC Thunder, Paul George (Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)
OKC Thunder, Paul George (Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
2 of 6
Next
OKC Thunder (Photo by Zach Beeker/NBAE via Getty Images)
OKC Thunder (Photo by Zach Beeker/NBAE via Getty Images) /

The good gets even better:

He’s never going to win it, but George might have been the most valuable player in the league this season. There are cases to be made for James Harden and Giannis Antetokuonmpo, for sure, but here are some fun, little stats from this year.

  • OKC Thunder had the eighth best offense in the league with him on the floor this year and the worst in the NBA without him
  • George was the leader in ESPN’s real plus-minus by more than two points
  • He became the third player in NBA history to average at least 25 points while taking more than nine three’s per game this season
  • He is the only player this century to average at least 28 points a game with a usage rate below 30

His impact was, quite simply, incalculable. With him, the Thunder were a dark horse contender with the make-up to push the greatest team ever assembled and without him, the Thunder were the sorriest offense in the league, at the mercy of a physically declining point guard who consistently shot the team in the foot.

The MVP candidate:

The narrative around his season was always that George’s performance was somewhat of a surprise; that no one could have seen it coming. And while that’s true to an extent – I don’t know anyone who had PG finishing third on their MVP ballot preseason – chalking everything he did this year as a fluky season shortchanges the incremental growth he made to get here.

Since his catastrophic leg injury at Team USA practice back in 2014, he’s been making small leaps as a scorer, all accumulating in the big one we saw this year. Coming off screens, he’d continued to make progress every year, jumping from the 67.5th percentile in 2016-2017 to 84.5th this year; as a playmaker in the pick-and-roll, he went from the 71.7th percentile in 2015-2016 to the 91st this season; spotting up, he rose from the 84th to the 96th.

Everything he’s done since he got back focused on the idea of improving little by little every year until we got the player who was carrying OKC’s whole offense.

Home/Thunder News