The Sixers' Paul George problem: Why veteran's imminent injury return may cause more issues than it solves

Sometimes you have a plan and everything goes according to it and afterward everyone involved looks smart. That has only rarely been the case for the Sixers. More often -- with all sorts of different general managers and coaches in charge over many years -- things tend to go sideways. 

It's not hard to figure out which category adding Paul George as a free agent before last season falls into. In his final season with the Clippers, George posted career highs in field-goal and three-point percentages. He also played in 74 games, by far his most appearances in the previous five seasons. The Sixers rushed to give him a four-year, $212 million max contract. The Clippers watched him walk out the door for nothing. One of those teams is pretty happy about the decision it made. The other is the Sixers. 

George's first season in Philly was an abject disaster. He played in just 41 games, his fewest in three years, and watched his points per game, field-goal percentage and three-point shooting all nose dive. 

In fairness to Daryl Morey, the Sixers' president of basketball operations, I was fully in favor of making that move. It seemed like the right play at the time. George is a nine-time All-Star and has made All-NBA six times and All-Defense four times. He's a big body who can space the floor, guard just about anybody, and doesn't need the offense to be about him in order to contribute. Putting him next to Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid made sense on paper. Then the paper was immediately fed into the shredder when all three were shut down at various points in the season on the way to the Sixers winning 24 games, their fewest in nine years. 

After having knee surgery over the summer, George has yet to play for the Sixers this season. That might change shortly. He has practiced with the team and on Tuesday the Sixers announced he is in "the final stage of his return to play." He is scheduled to be re-evaluated this week. 

It appears PG's season debut is not far off. Folding someone of his caliber back into the mix ought to be reason for the Sixers to celebrate -- but is it?

The expectations for the Sixers could not have been lower coming into the season, to the extent that anyone anywhere expected anything from them at all. And yet despite George not playing and Embiid being on a minutes restriction (not to mention being unavailable for back-to-backs and once again dealing with knee soreness that has him day to day), the Sixers have gotten off to an encouraging 7-4 start. They have a host of young, exciting guards and wings headlined by Maxey, who started the campaign shot out of a scoring cannon and is third in the league in points per game. After the late-season tank a year ago, the Sixers used the third overall pick to draft VJ Edgecombe, who promptly wasted no time inserting himself into the Rookie of the Year race that everyone figured would be won by Cooper Flagg without much fight. Quentin Grimes and Kelly Oubre are two of the team's top four scorers and have been critical components in the Sixers being competitive in nearly every game they've played. (Three of Philly's four losses were by a combined six points.)

With the Sixers running everything through Maxey, surrounded by a bunch of athletic try-hards, they're fifth in offensive rating. Beyond the numbers, for the first time in a while, the vibes are good and they're a fun watch. So how does PG fit into all this and how might his return impact an ecosystem that's been pretty stable without him?

When he signed with the Sixers, George said part of the appeal was playing with "one of the best young point guards in the league and one of the best, if not the best, bigs in the league. Let's see what this looks like."

What it looked like was not great. In 294 minutes together last season, the trio was plus-2 and went 7-8 in those games. That's hardly encouraging, though how they played last season is not the way the Sixers have approached matters this time around.

Maxey is the main focus now. Embiid has only played six games and is averaging 19.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.5 blocks in 23.3 minutes. Those numbers are a far cry from the outsized stats he posted a few seasons ago when he won MVP. Any contribution they get from him these days feels like a bonus and they have mostly resisted the urge to force feed the offense through him or insert him into late-game situations just because he's Joel Embiid. On the most notable occasion to date where they succumbed to those old urges, it did not go well. The Sixers were humming along and had a 24-point lead on the road against the Bulls in early November when they put Embiid back in the game late to disastrous effect. Embiid took three inadvisable shots in the fourth quarter, including an ugly three-pointer which he missed, and was minus-13 in 12 minutes. The Sixers lost by two. 

The point being that the Sixers have performed better when they're happy to get whatever they can out of Embiid rather than making him a focal point. That ought to be the approach with George when he returns too, though it's fair to wonder if it will be. 

One of the main weaknesses with this Sixers team is its lack of size, particularly in the frontcourt. The Sixers have gone with a rotating cast at power forward, though there have been promising glimmers. In his first start for the Sixers, 25-year-old Trendon Watford posted his first career triple double in a win over the Raptors last week. He naturally followed that up with two underwhelming performances against the Pistons and Celtics, but Watford fits with the young and promising theme that's worked for the Sixers so far. George's return likely relegates Watford to the bench where he'll jockey for minutes as the backup four. 

How many minutes George plays and how involved he'll be in the offense is something to monitor. He'll be 36 in May and isn't exactly on the same timeline as the aforementioned up-and-comers. In theory his size, defense and floor spacing should be a boost. Anything they wring out of him beyond that would be added value. If the Sixers treat him as a cog instead of a main wheel, it might work. The fear is that his return will tempt them to artificially inflate his usage to justify his supersized salary. 

In addition to being on the older side, George is also expensive. Paired with his injury history and his lack of production a year ago, his contract is one of the worst in the league. 

George has a player option on the back end that will pay him $56.5 million in the 2027-28 season. That essentially makes him untradable. 

The lopsided production-to-cost ratio is the kind of thing that would normally make Sixers fans lose their minds. That hasn't been the case this season. Almost no one seems to care. It's fine because they're winning some games and they're entertaining. The surest way to kick up fan backlash would be to overdo the PG dosage when he returns. Better to reintegrate him slowly and quietly and see how it goes. Maybe he can even take Draymond Green's advice and restart his podcast to stay busy. Everyone needs a hobby.