I just want to touch on, man, on my situation. I've seen a guy that played for that (Pacers) organization, gave that organization everything they had, or everything he had, and was essentially traded to the dogs. And I'm speaking on Danny Granger, who was one of the better players in Pacers history. And at the time, they traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers. And this was a guy that was battling injuries, and that's where you send him?
I don't entirely think he's wrong. There were a number of things that Larry Bird did in the last few years that seemed almost designed to make sure Paul George wouldn't want to stay here in free agency. I said it when it all happened. Eventually, we didn't even get to the end of the contract before he wanted out. And why shouldn't he? The Granger Trade. Not getting Lance re-signed. Public comments against Hibbert. Driving David West to sign elsewhere. Trying to force PG to play out of position. Firing his coach. Trading his best friend on the team. It all adds up.
It is my strong opinion that, even if Paul George didn't always give us 100% of what we wanted out of him or handle himself perfectly during adversity, our organization did a bad job of either keeping a team around him that could win or making sure PG was involved in deciding the franchise's direction and personally invested enough in the outcome to stay. And in today's NBA you have to do both of those in order to keep a superstar level player. I think Kevin Pritchard already seems like he's doing a better job of that with our current crop of players, and that's going to be especially important if either Myles Turner or Victor Oladipo make the kind of strides we hope they do.