The bad
From a pure basketball standpoint, it’s difficult to find any real weaknesses George had this year. His playmaking was about the same it’s always been – that is, decidedly mediocre – but he generally made the right reads when he needed to and usually scored enough to make up for it.
His defense was a bit off from where it usually is, but that kind of thing tends to happen when you’re carrying the team on the other side. His FTAr – the ratio of his free throw attempts to his field goal attempts – was a little low, given his role, but the style he plays doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to getting to the lane at an elite rate.
If I were the Thunder, the concerning part of George’s season would be the rotator cuff injury he had right before the All-Star break and the way he fell off a cliff after. At first, it looked like a minor injury from which he’d recover after a week off but when he looked even worse coming back, alarm bells started to sound.
Part of what made him such a special shooter earlier in the year was the relative ease with which he could take shots like this without having to generate an inordinate amount of power from his base:
His arms were so strong and his release was so sharp that all he needed to do was line up his arms and he’d have the strength to consistently knock down crazy shots. When he got injured, though, it was clear that something changed. With his shoulder clearly nagging at him, he started to look for other ways to compensate for the power he lost. Sometimes it was by changing up his landing spot and throwing his balance off:
Sometimes it was by changing his stance to create some more power:
These are all relatively minute tweaks, but they made a major impact. Once he started bricking, his game slowly collapsed in on itself. After building his offense around him being one of the most unstoppable shooters in the league, it was difficult for him to adjust when his shots stopped dropping.
He’s never been the kind of guy who wears defenses down with relentless drives to the basket, nor has he been particularly effective at it when he’s tried. He’s always lived and died by the three-pointer. The one basketball complaint we can realistically have with him – and it’s a big one – is that he doesn’t have many counters.
He has some wildly intriguing moments where he breaks down his man off the dribble, gets to the bucket and comes up with some ridiculous finish around the rim you think to yourself, “If he could just do that more, I’m not sure anyone on this planet could stop him,” only to turn around on the next possession and settle for a contested mid-range pull-up. You didn’t notice it as much this year because they went in more than they ever had in the past, but this has always been his key issue.