Things have changed a lot in two months for Paul George, who made it clear a couple of months ago that the Clippers were all about winning the championship this season; other than that would be a complete failure for the Californians. That was the general thought around the league and that’s what Paul George believed until they were eliminated by the Denver Nuggets earlier this week.
After Game 7 89-114 loss to the Nuggets, George explained this season wasn’t about winning the championship, stating the team can only get better from now on.
“I think internally, we’ve always felt this is not a championship or bust year for us. We can only get better the longer we stay together. The more chemistry for this group the better,” he said while talking about the team’s championship expectations.
This is a different approach to the season now. The Clippers swingman talked with Farbod Esnaashari of Sports Illustrated back in June, where he commented about his expectations entering this season and made it clear that the Clippers expected to win it all ‘immediately.’
“Immediately, we expected to come in and win it all. We didn’t have no other, like this was going to take a year to get used to one another.”
Despite the hiatus, he was confident the Clippers could compete for the title.
“I think it’s going to go through stages. Yeah, when we first start back up, everybody is weird about no fans being there. I think honestly bro, we’re going to be so excited to hoop again, and so excited to ball again, that’s not going to matter.”
That is an interesting change of mind. PG went from wanting to win it all to blame the lack of chemistry and make excuses for a disastrous exit of the 2020 NBA playoffs. The Clippers need to figure things out this summer. They can’t live all the time blaming the lack of chemistry when they fail to show up in big games.
