Paul George came to the The Los Angeles Clippers five years ago with Kawhi Leonardand together, they immediately made the Clippers the darlings of the national media. Right from the start, many pundits overwhelmingly picked them to win the NBA championship, and the same prediction was made ahead of the 2022-23 season, as well as, to some extent, last season.
But in those five years, the Clippers have reached the Western Conference Finals just once and have failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.
George left the Clippers this summer to join the The Philadelphia 76ersa team that now appears to have enough means on paper to overthrow the world champion Boston Celtics in the 2025 playoffs. But George’s father revealed on “Podcast P with Paul George” that there was a desire to join the The Los Angeles Lakers (h/t Clutch points).
“It hurt,” Paul George Sr. added of his son’s decision to leave Los Angeles“I felt like they stabbed us in the back because I thought Paul had done a lot for the team, as far as the fan base, the fans were there. He was there. I think he gave them 110 percent and what he was asking for, it wasn’t much. But they saw something different.”
“…I was looking, okay, well, we’ll go next door then.” [to the Lakers]”But they’ve already spent too much money,” George Sr. added. “I thought we’d still go down the tunnel, but we’d wear a different color.”
This wasn’t the first time young George had wanted to join the Lakers. The Palmdale, California native asked Indiana Pacers to trade him to the Lakers during the 2016-17 season, but he was sent to the Oklahoma City Thunder this offseason instead. In the summer of 2018, there were rumors that he would come to the Purple and Gold as a free agent and join LeBron Jamesbut he instead decided to stay with the Thunder.
This article was originally published on LeBron Wire: Paul George’s father says he wants to join the Lakers this summer
