The Boston Celtics trading Jaylen Brown for Paul George was met with a fair amount of backlash this summer. Among the reasons why it wasn't well-received was because Brown had his best individual season as a player while George's best days have been behind him for some time.
However, George showed during Boston's series vs. Philadelphia that he still has a lot of good basketball left in him. On both sides of the floor, George was absolutely ripping apart the Celtics in his own way. For everything he was doing, he wasn't exactly putting up 20 a night.
He occasionally did, but the 76ers never asked him to consistently. In Boston, George is expected to replace some of the scoring void left by Brown, but not entirely. It's going to be more of a by committee approach in Boston.
Bleacher Report's bold Celtics prediction is that George will average 20 points a game this season. Maybe he will, but they shouldn't ask him to, given his age and reputation for being a limited player at this stage of his career.
Yeah, it's not a great look for someone who is being paid over $50 million, but putting up 20 points or more regularly does not mean George can't be a very useful cog in the Mazzulla Ball machine.
George should still be an amazing addition
There's good reason to believe George can thrive in Mazzulla's system even if he won't put up close to the numbers Brown did in Boston. He doesn't have to play like a star to do that. He just has to play at the same level Al Horford and Jrue Holiday did just a few years ago.
Those two weren't tasked with putting up 20 points a night. They could do it on occasion, but the Celtics never demanded that out of them. They just asked those guys to fit with the system and do what they do best: play two-way basketball.
In fact, Horford's traditional stats gradually fell off with each passing year as a Celtic, and yet it was pretty obvious to see why that wasn't much of a concern: Boston was winning a lot of games. They were going deep into the playoffs.
Holiday more or less added to that, as he basically was the last piece of their title puzzle. It's why Boston didn't think twice to extend him regardless of how high the price was. Guys like him and Horford won't wow with traditional stats, but teams want them because their integral to winning.
George used to be one of the NBA's best players whose traditional stats would wow the masses. He's being paid to be what he used to be. The upside is, because his current skillset shares a lot of similarities of what Horford and Holiday brought to the table, no one should complain about his paycheck if Boston's winning.
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