Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George hasn’t been able to to bring a title to the franchise since joining it and has had to deal with the team being in the shadow of the Los Angeles Lakers.
While winning a championship with the Clippers is undoubtedly one of the most important things for him, George is also trying to help out Clippers fans in a different way.
“Those fans that have stayed and are by our side, those are the ones I want to give back to,” George told Natasha Dye of People. “At least give them an opportunity to go at Lakers fans with some sort of trash talk.”
George is currently in his fifth season with the Clippers after getting traded there by the Oklahoma City Thunder back in the summer of 2019.
During that span, the Clippers have had some postseason success, but they’ve mainly fallen short of expectations. During his time with the Clippers, he’s averaged 23.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.5 steals per game while knocking down 44.9 percent of his attempts from the field and 38.9 percent of his shots from beyond the arc.
Over the summer, the eight-time All-Star expressed some of his annoyances with how Lakers fans show their fandom.
Given the fact that the Lakers and Clippers share an arena, there’s a bit of a rivalry. While the Clippers have won 13 of the 16 regular season matchups between the two teams since George joined, the Lakers have enjoyed more postseason success during that time.
The Lakers won the 2020 NBA Finals despite many thinking the Clippers had a real shot at winning it all that season. The Clippers were up 3-1 on the Denver Nuggets in the 2020 Western Conference semifinals and very close to finishing them off but lost three straight games to crash out of the playoffs.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Lakers and Clippers finally face off in a playoff series this season. Plenty of folks have wished for that since George and Kawhi Leonard joined the Clippers.
The two sides have played each other only once so far this season, with the Lakers winning in overtime back in early November. The next contest between the two isn’t scheduled to take place until Jan. 7.
Perhaps George will give Clippers fans a chance to talk some trash then.
