With gold medal, Team USA's Paul George ends difficult chapter: 'I’m officially back'
How great must Sunday have felt for Paul George? The Indiana Pacers star capped a sterling international debut for the U.S. men’s basketball team with 22 strong minutes in a dominant 96-66 win over Serbia to win gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. While the 26-year-old struggled a bit with his shot (just 2-for-9 from the floor for nine points), he more than made up for it by contributing a sensational defensive effort, snaring three steals while spending much of his floor time locking down point guard Milos Teodosic to help limit the Serbian star to just nine points on 4-for-11 shooting with three turnovers to mitigate his three assists.
More @Yg_Trece: “I don’t know what that (championship) feeling is like yet. But as of now, this is my championship”…
— David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt) August 21, 2016
More than his individual impact on the achievement of Team USA’s collective goal, though, wrapping up the fortnight in Rio with a gold medal represented the end of a two-year-long journey for the NBA All-Star forward. A long road that began with the devastating right leg fracture he suffered during an August 2014 exhibition, continued through a grueling rehabilitation effort during which he never wavered from his commitment to returning to the national team and persisted through a 2015-16 NBA season during which he returned to the ranks of the game’s greats ended with George in Rio, proving himself as arguably the most important all-around player on the best men’s basketball team in the world … and, to hear George tell it, as at least as significant a force as he was before his injury.
From David Woods of the Indianapolis Star:
“I just finalized this whole story, put it to rest,” the Indiana Pacers forward said. “I’m officially back.” […]
George said coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke to him before the game, reminding him of that day Aug. 1, 2014, when the Pacer suffered a compound fracture of his leg during a USA Basketball scrimmage. The day would come, Coach K told him, when he would be playing for a gold medal.
“The fact is, you look back a couple of years and he’s lying on a floor in Las Vegas, not knowing whether his career was over,” said Jerry Colangelo, managing director for USA Basketball. “Let alone being able to make our team, participate and get a gold medal. It’s a big day for him.”
It’s a day George has been dreaming about for years — not just since August of 2014, but since he was a little kid with big dreams growing up in Palmdale, Calif.
A photo posted by Paul George (@ygtrece) on Aug 21, 2016 at 3:19pm PDT
“I [came back to Team USA] for the inner Paul George, the kid Paul George who always dreamed of winning a gold medal,” he told Michael Lee of The Vertical back in July, shortly after the U.S. began workouts in Las Vegas. “I wasn’t worried about no injuries. I wasn’t worried about getting back on the court and how would I fare out there. Winning the gold medal is a lot bigger than any other concerns. It’s been a childhood dream, so, for myself, it’s just fulfilling it.”
He fulfilled it through his willingness to take a step back, accepting a role as Mike Krzyzewski’s sixth man despite having three NBA All-Star berths, three All-NBA Third Team nods and three NBA All-Defensive Team selections on his resume. He fulfilled it by committing fully to that role and to the challenge of playing stopper, especially in the gold medal game, when George’s gift for slithering around screens, his sure-footed mimicking of Teodosic and his long-armed, active-hands closing off of passing lanes helped short-circuit a Serbian attack that had bedeviled the U.S. in group play.
“I took it upon myself to take [Teodosic] out of the game,” he said after the win.
The defensive spark that George and fellow reserve stoppers Kyle Lowry and Jimmy Butler provided — with ample aerial support provided by a bombs-away effort from Kevin Durant — helped fuel a furious U.S. run that turned a 14-11 deficit into one of the most lopsided gold-medal victories in Olympic hoops history.
The U.S. outscored Serbia by 37 points in George’s 22 minutes, continuing an Olympics-long trend of reaching peak performance with the Pacers’ two-way linchpin on the floor. George finished second only to top scorer and leading minute-recipient Durant in plus-minus on Team USA.
"Paul George is a superstar player, he might be the best defensive player (#TeamUSA 's) ever had." –@therealboeheim on @Yg_Trece
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) August 22, 2016
Now, like the rest of his U.S. teammates, George will return home for some well deserved rest and relaxation before heading to training camp with the Pacers to prepare for another long NBA season. There will be new teammates to integrate, a new head coach in Nate McMillan to adjust to, and new challenges ahead. For his part, George seems eager to turn his attention to what’s coming … and to finally, at long last, stop focusing on what’s past.
“It’s closing this chapter,” George said, according to Kareem Copeland of The Associated Press. “This is the ending piece to the whole rehab story.”
The path there was protracted and painful, but standing atop the podium, feeling the weight of Olympic gold around your neck and listening to “The Star-Spangled Banner” play … well, that sure sounds like one hell of an ending.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
