Coach Tyronn Lue has been careful not to speak for Paul George about the foot injury that’s plagued the seven-time All-Star this season, but after Thursday’s 101-94 loss to Denver, the Clippers forward shed some light on it himself.
George said the bone edema – the swelling – in a toe bone on his right foot flared up again recently. As a result, he missed outings this week against Milwaukee and Orlando before a gametime decision put him in the lineup Thursday against Denver.
He was on the court 32 minutes, a pre-planned limit, and contributed 17 points on 5-for-15 shooting, misses that included some gimmes right at the basket. He also gave the Clippers eight rebounds and a team-high five assists, but all of it was a laborious effort, George said afterward.
“It’s really no pop on the right foot,” George said via Zoom video conference. “I can’t really bend my toe and have it flexing all the way on that second toe. It’s just figuring it out. I gotta figure it out. Most importantly, if I can play, and play with minimal pain, that’s what I’m going for. We gotta figure it out though.”
The injury kept George out of seven consecutive games in February, sapping the Clippers’ star’s momentum noticeably.
In the 17 games since returning from that seven-game absence, George is shooting 42.6% from the floor, 35% from deep and 84.5% from the stripe on 3.4 free-throw attempts per game.
In the 20 games before that? George was shooting 50.8% from the field, 48.8% from 3-point range and 90.5% from the free-throw line on 4.2 foul attempts per game.
Even as his shooting numbers have fallen, his production on the boards and facilitating has stayed steady: He was averaging 5.5 assists before his absence and 5.5 assists per game since, too. His rebounding average has even ticked up slightly, from 6.2 per game to 6.4.
Despite all that output – including the fiery shooting stats to start the season – George said in February that swelling had bothered him at times early on, too. He said he was working to manage it, but the NBA’s breakneck schedule didn’t help.
“I had a stretch where we were playing every other day, so I had time to kind of recover going into the games. And if you recall, we played Brooklyn and then we played Cleveland, two tough games that really caused me to have to dig down and push and plant and play off those toes,” said George, whose 36-point outburst in a victory over Cleveland on Feb. 3 came on the second game of a back-to-back set, after which he was shut down for those next seven contests.
“Just that back-to-back kind of tipped me overboard and I couldn’t recover, I needed some time off because it was swelled up. I just tried to keep it rolling for the team and it wound up creeping up on me.”
And it crept up again this week, he said Thursday, on a night that could prove a precursor for more iffy availabilities going forward.
“It is a day-to-day process, but I’m doing better,” he said. “You play through what you can and what you can’t, you got to be smart about. If it was my way, I wish I could be on the court and play all the games, but some days it is more sore than others and so you look ahead and plan ahead.”
ZUBAC’S DEFENSE
Thursday wasn’t a great shooting night for almost anybody: The Clippers collectively went just 41.2% from the floor and 29.4% from long range – uncharacteristically poor numbers for a team that’s shot 48.2% this season and a league-leading 41.4% from deep.
It wasn’t just the hosts who weren’t hitting, however.
Hours after picking up his second Player of the Month award of the season, Nuggets star Nikola Jokic also had a heck of a time getting buckets against the Clippers, finishing with just 14 points – half his season average – on 6-of-16 shooting. A paltry offering for a fellow who’s shooting 56.7% for the season.
Ivica Zubac had something to do with Jokic’s off night.
The only Clipper who’s played all 50 games this season, Zubac used his 7-foot frame and physicality to disrupt Denver’s MVP candidate, including keeping him off the free-throw line altogether.
In the 5:47 that Zubac guarded him, Jokic shot just 1 for 7, according to NBA.com/stats matchup data. An outcome that had shades of the 2020 postseason matchup, when Zubac was effective in limited time against Jokic, who had a negative 8.8 net rating when the young Clippers center was on the court and a positive 20.8 rating when he wasn’t.
“I thought Zu played great,” Lue said after Thursday’s loss. “I thought he called our coverages out, he did a good job on Joker, trying to be physical. I thought he did a good job switching up on (Jamal) Murray a couple of times, Zu’s been playing well. He gets out there on the floor every single night, he plays every night, and what he’s brought us in that starting lineup has been great.”
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