Following a busy few days in efforts to find a trade partner to ship out All-Star forward Paul George, Indiana Pacers president Kevin Pritchard didn't hide his feelings toward the situation after exhausting every possible measure to get a worthwhile return for his investment.
“For me it was a gut-punch,” Pritchard told Scott Agness of Vigilant Sports on Friday morning. “It was a total gut-punch because we’d had many conversations over the summer about players that we’d like to add, a little bit of the style that we’d like to play, and I was, in my opinion, very inclusive with him. And the message over the summer, up until this weekend was ‘Let’s build a winning team.’ And so when that came in that he wanted to look at another place, it was a gut-punch for us.”
“But I would say this: It’s important for players to want to be here. We built a great organization, we’re building an amazing practice facility right across [the street] that is state-of-the-art, we believe in our culture, we work hard everyday to have a good family atmosphere here, and we want our players to be here. That’s important, it really is. When Paul said he didn’t, it’s a gut-punch.”
The news came only a day after Pritchard had attended one of George's charity softball games, a public appearance in which he told reporters “I'm a Pacer” — momentarily quieting down the incessant rumors of a possible departure to his hometown Los Angeles.
George's agent, Aaron Mintz, called Pritchard the following day to inform him of his client's intentions not to stay after the end of next season.
“I can’t speculate on what changed his mind,” said Pritchard, who hasn't talked to his star forward since the softball game. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him, I talked to his agent when I was informed. So I’m not sure.
“It felt like we were in vibrant agreement,” Pritchard, who not only shared but discussed the team’s plans with George, continued. “We had conversations with players and how we want to go forward so for me it was a shock — the way I saw it and the way it got into the media.”
Then, there was a leak — changing all the dynamic of trying to pull off a worthwhile trade.
“It couldn’t have come at a worse time for me,” Pritchard said. “If we would’ve known this a little longer ago or a few months ago, I think we could have been a little bit more prepared. And then the way it got out… we struggled with that.”
Now the Pacers deal with a nearly-impossible situation — playing poker with half their hand showing to the rest of the table. Despite getting inquiries from several teams in the league, Indiana now knows that George's camp has informed other teams he'd be nothing more than a rental player, hellbent to end up in a purple-and-gold uniform by 2018-19.
“You go from a situation where you’re trying to build and you don’t feel like you’re that far away with Paul, Myles [Turner] coming as fast as he’s coming, [Jeff] Teague having a good year — we felt like as the season went on, he got better,” Pritchard said.
“It was a surprise. So now we have to adjust. We have to look at every scenario. I’m confident that we’ll get something, and there’s so many things on the board.”
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