The summer of 2019 drastically changed the future of the Clippers franchise when they decided to trade a massive overhaul of their draft assets and multiple players for Paul George.
Unfortunately for the Clippers, they traded away a future MVP of the league in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as well, in the process, who had only played his rookie season so far in the league at the time.
Nonetheless, their current head coach, Tyronn Lue, believes the Clippers took the right decision at the time and even he would do the same in their position, even with the hindsight that Gilgeous-Alexander will become an MVP-caliber player someday.
In the recent interview with NFL legend Shannon Sharpe on the Club Shay Shay podcast, Lue spoke his mind on the trade.
“No. No, I didn’t,” said Lue when Sharpe asked him if he had any idea Gilgeous-Alexander would be as good as he is today.
“And we talk about it all the time… If it had been done all over again, I mean, I’d have done the trade too. PG was second in MVP voting. It was a two-way player; it was like Jordan-Pippen. You know what I’m saying?”
“And Shai was a really good, you know, young player, but you didn’t know he was going to be this, you know?”
Lue argued that if Gilgeous-Alexander stayed with the Clippers, he would not have been the number one option like he was with the Thunder, and hence, without the ball as much in his hands, he would not have developed as well as he did. Therefore, leaving the Clippers was the best option for him, too.
“And so he was able to grow and figure it out, have his own team. And like I mean, anything hindsight 2020, you can say, “Oh, I would have never done that.” But who wouldn’t have traded, you know, a first-year player for a guy like PG, you know, to team up with Kawhi, right?”
“Like anybody would have done that. They are lying if they say they wouldn’t have… that was a no-brainer to me.”
Lue was not with the Clippers at the time when they traded for Paul George in 2019. He replaced Doc Rivers at the helm just one season in 2020, one season after they traded for George.
The former Thunder star, Paul George, was a six-time All-Star by the end of the 2018-19 season, when he averaged 28.0 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 4.1 assists. He was, in fact, third in MVP voting that season, behind Giannis Antetokounmpo and James Harden. He was one of the best two-way players in the league at the time.
While Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 10.8 points, 3.3 assists, and 2.8 rebounds, and barely showed any glimpses of becoming the player that he is today. Therefore, it is understandable that George was considered a very valuable player at the time, and the Clippers had to offload an overhaul of assets to get him.
But that trade completely shifted the standard of expectations in the trade market to sign a star player. And in hindsight, it is still considered one of the worst trades in NBA history.
