Analyzing the PG-13 Woj Pod

This morning on my way to Starbucks where I ordered a tall (see: small) drink I listened to the first episode of recently refurbished "The Woj Pod" where Adrian Wojnarowski sat down with Paul George, newly of the Oklahoma City Thunder. I had a couple quick thoughts after listening to the 30-minute episode from last Thursday.

Early on in the pod there was a question asking PG what he's looking for in a team if he plays the free agency roulette next summer and decides to change unis. I had qualms with PG's answer in that he said he wanted a chance to win. Granted, everybody says that. But if that's the case than the Lakers may not be the best destination. Now the way to think about this might be that PG wants a chance to win...even if it's in 2020 and beyond, at which point in time he'll be on the downslide of his career at 30+ years old. Fortunately, if he were to go to the Lakers the team around him would be marginally younger. However, later in the pod PG stated that he would want to go to a team--again, assuming he changes teams next summer--that had a chance to win sooner rather than later. He stated that he would rather not have to start fresh somewhere and build things from the ground up. Instead, and with Woj's leading on with the question, PG made it known that he would rather go somewhere where he could immediately win or recruit guys to help him win now.

The later situation is what makes LA more feasible for George rather than the former. While the Lakers might not be positioned to compete for a championship with the current talent on the roster, they may have a better chance if PG can go to LA and bring with him a Russell Westbrook, a Lebron James, a Klay Thompson, a Chris Paul, a Dwayne Wade, a John Wall, or any combination of the above talent. In that scenario, if a couple or several of those aforementioned superstars were to go to LA then a win-now attitude might prevail.

Further on in the pod, Woj got down to how both PG and Russ have similar backgrounds and how that might help them mesh and play together. At this point in time PG called Russ selfless (I think Steven Adams and Domantas Sabonis would say differently) and that's good that he thinks that now. Maybe that, too, will help the two mega-stars co-exist as they aim for a top three spot in the Western Conference this season. Or PG will quickly have that thought quelled and he'll start looking for mansions in Beverly Hills by December.

George mentioned that he wasn't heavily recruited coming out of high school and how that might shape his attitudes and his actions over the next 12 months, and I think this is a noteworthy point amidst all the other George-specific banter on this pod. I think in the last two decades especially we've seen stars who weren't necessarily recruited to college (because they jumped right to the League) or were under-recruited getting to the NBA and therefore then reveling in free agency recruitment. We saw this with Lebron most notably in 2010, and we've seen it with Paul Millsap and Gordon Hayward as recently as this off-season.

Further on in the pod, when asked about the timing of his announcing that he would be leaving for LA from Indy in the summer of 2018, PG says that he didn't want Indiana to get nothing for him. Yet, we can't deny what ended up happening, and that was PG mentioning his intentions to go to LA at the end of the season, so that other teams then knew that they might only have 12 months with him. I want to give George credit for being asked a good question by Woj and being caught a little off-guard in a sense, but I also think PG didn't really think this one through. If he really wanted the Pacers to receive a better haul for him and he wanted to be as generous in thought as he says he was, he should have announced he was leaving earlier than a time when the Pacers would not receive as many good offers as they would have had he stated he was leaving, I don't know, before last season? Before this past trade deadline? He really put the Pacers in a tight spot, and maybe didn't set them up as well as he had intended by announcing his intentions.

Along that note, PG mentioned (again, in response to a leading question by Woj) that he thought the Lakers would be more invested in acquiring him. So George obviously paid very little to no attention to the Carmelo-leaving-Denver situation in 2011. I'll refresh your memory, valued reader. Melo bullied his way out of Denver so thoroughly that the Nugs were forced to deal him to the team he wanted to play for, and in the process the Knicks were without talent to put around Melo once he got there. The Lakers were smarter in avoiding that same pitfall.

Maybe that's me putting way more thought into the pod than is warranted, but then again, I think there was some material here to be more than glossed over.