Paul George Makes the Sixers Serious NBA Title Contenders, If History Is a Guide
...But is history a guide right now?
Paul George has long been one of my favorite NBA players. His 6-foot-8 frame, two-way ability and hyper-versatile skillset — which allows him to fit into just about any role next to any combination of fellow stars — makes him something of a prototype modern NBA player. It’s been inspirational to see his journey both on the court, overcoming a nasty leg injury suffered in the summer of 2014, and as a personality, becoming one of the best podcasters among active players. Plus, he’s just really fun to watch:
All of that is why I’m so excited to see what George does with the Philadelphia 76ers, where rumors have him signing a 4-year, $212 million max contract this week. George will slot in next to the Sixers’ other big stars — former league MVP Joel Embiid and rising sensation Tyrese Maxey1 — to create a Big Three that can go toe-to-toe with any in the NBA right now.
If having a Big Three is what matters anymore, that is.
Last month, I wrote a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how Daryl Morey and the Sixers brain trust might go about shopping for a third star with all of that cap space they have to use in free agency. I concluded that, unless Maxey continued leveling up to the tier of the typical second-best player on a title team — and he wasn’t there yet last year, per Estimated RAPTOR — Philly would need to add an extra star on the order of a George or LeBron James in order to truly craft a championship-worthy roster.
But with George, that problem is now solved for the Sixers. Here’s a look at how Embiid, George and Maxey’s RAPTOR ratings from last season stack up against the average 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-best stars on title teams since 1985 (including the 2024 Celtics):
As we can see, the 2025 Sixers are now very ready to chase the ring, at least by this accounting. When healthy, Embiid would already be at the high end of title-winning top players,2 and Maxey is better than the median third banana. By exactly matching the median for championship No. 2s, George has completed the Sixers’ Big Three with room to spare, even if he shows some age-related decline or Embiid regresses to the mean after the highest single-season RAPTOR of his career.
George’s list of comparable players also gives Philadelphia some championship parallels. I have a system that finds similar players at roughly the same age based on their percentile grades in different categories, weighted for the importance of each skill. Here are George’s percentiles from this past season:
That blend of all-around skills — great offense and defense, efficient scoring, good ballhandling and rebounding, high steals — leads to this set of similar players:
That’s a really fascinating group. Manu is a particularly interesting comp for PG-13, because both are frankly still underrated players — despite Ginóbili literally being in the Hall of Fame — with a chameleon-like ability to take on different roles depending on the needs of their team. While neither Ginóbili season on the list above yielded a Spurs title, Drexler in 1995, Jordan in 1997, Curry in 2022 (a weird comp, admittedly) and Kobe in 2010 all did win the championship during their seasons on the list. And the rest either were coming off an earlier title (Paul Pierce) or had agonizing brushes with championships but just missed out (Eddie Jones, Chris Paul).
Anyway, the main point is that we’ve seen players who play like George win lots of championships throughout relatively recent history — another piece of evidence that he can finally help put the Sixers over the top.
The only question mark — beyond just the usual health concerns with Embiid and a 34-year-old George — might just be whether the star-powered model laid out above still holds sway in the league in 2024 and beyond.
It’s not exactly news that we are currently in one of the weirdest periods of parity in NBA history. With the Celtics’ win last month, we’ve now seen six different NBA champs in six seasons, only the second time the usually dynastic league has ever seen that happen. And alongside that trend, we’ve seen the “Superteam” model — the one that Philly is currently building under the assumptions of — fail far more often than it’s succeeded.
On the heels of an era where the 2008 Celtics, 2012-13 Heat, 2016 Cavs, 2017-18 Warriors and 2020 Lakers (plus arguably others) all won in some measure by bringing together externally acquired stars to form Big Twos and/or Big Threes, those teams’ heirs have almost uniformly fallen flat. (See: the Kyrie Irving/Kevin Durant/James Harden Brooklyn Nets, the KD/Devin Booker/Bradley Beal Phoenix Suns, the Dame Lillard/Giannis Bucks, later versions of the Lakers with LeBron/AD/Russell Westbrook, etc.)
We even have an example of a superteam with Paul George failing to reach its potential in the form of the Kawhi Leonard/PG-13/Harden/Westbrook Los Angeles Clippers of recent vintage.
It remains unclear whether the NBA’s new CBA, which came with elements to discourage front offices from creating expensive superteam rosters, has already nerfed what was the dominant team-building strategy of the 2010s, causing recent attempts to fail. Or perhaps those teams were just poorly constructed, pale imitators trying to unthinkingly hop on the superteam craze without a broader plan.
Either way, the Sixers are going to be another test case for the value of a star-studded Big Three in an NBA that may have moved on from that style of champion. On paper, and if they stay healthy — a HUGE “if”, of course — Philadelphia now has the star power to contend with the Celtics, Mavs, Nuggets, T-Wolves, Thunder, Knicks and the rest of next year’s title favorites. George immediately provides that because he is one of the best and most versatile wings in the game today. But only time will tell whether the model that brought him to the Sixers is outdated, or due for a resurgence in Philly next spring.
Filed under: NBA
Who has also signed a max extension as a restricted free agent now that some of the offseason’s other dominoes have fallen.
And he even broke his tendency of falling off in the postseason this year, averaging an impressive 33.0 points, 10.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game (with a very strong +6.1 RAPTOR) in the playoffs despite Philly’s first-round defeat against the Knicks.
I agree that the George signing does make the 76ers likely much better and an interesting story - despite eerie echoes of Harden to the Brooklyn Net in 2021 (which I also thought would make them better). However, every transaction has at least two components - talent and financial. It's this latter element that I have noticed a concerning trend in recent years across most sports.
Specifically, that due to the half-life of a General Manager being remarkably short these days, teams seem to be wildly overpaying for a handful productive remaining years spread out over a larger number of unproductive but guaranteed years on the back end. This is likely due to the realization that the front office needs to win now and will likely be gone in a few years even if they do. So, the future financial cleanup is left to some unknown GM to take care of.
You now regularly see guaranteed baseball deals stretching into the forties for a player who will likely be half of their value at that point. Trea Turner is but one example and Bryce Harper - an early adopter of this strategy - another. Harper, who has eight years remaining on his deal until well past peak age 39, attempted to negotiate an extension into his 40s so that he could ostensibly remain with Philadelphia "for life." Dombrowski politely declined, a tacit admission that the extremely popular and productive Harper's contract was already a suboptimal one for the Phillies.
This strategy has led to an increasing number of contracts that are far more expensive than simple AAV would suggest. As a result, I try to view these deals from the perspective of an Effective AAV where I take the number of likely remaining years of higher-level production and divide that by the total contract expense. In other words, at what future point in the contract term you would no longer be willing to pay the AAV for that player? Or, at what point would you love to have an opt out for the contract based on the aging curve? This will yield the Effective AAV.
The trend now is for teams to wildly pay more over time for a depreciating asset by pushing the excess costs and consequences to the back end into the future. This won't often end well for the team as those payment will eventually come due with consequences.
That's what worries me about the George deal. He'll be 35 during the postseason next year. While he had a good year last year, he does appear to be increasingly injured and declining a bit - not surprising for someone his age. So, let's assume he's got two season left where you would still sign him for $53MM...that makes an Effective AAV of $106MM for the two years that you really want his services given his likely production. That's expensive.
So yes, I see the Sixers as better for two years or so. However, the last two years of that contract could be brutal for Morey and the franchise. They're on the clock.