Philadelphia 76ers star Paul George has carved out an incredible NBA career for himself. The nine-time NBA All-Star, six-time All-NBA team member, and four-time All-Defensive team member bounced back from an incredible injury early in his professional career. He says he couldn't have done it without a little-known phone call from one Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.
George suffered a gruesome leg injury during a Team USA scrimmage in July 2014. The injury rocked the basketball world as one of the best up-and-coming stars faced a real uphill battle to get back to playing the game he loved.
Lakers' Kobe Bryant calls Paul George
Paul George recently had his father, Paul George Sr., on, “Podcast P with Paul George,” where the group discussed a number of topics, including George's leg injury in 2014.
George Sr. recalled the minutes before his son was taken into the hospital surgery room by wheelchair. Aaron Mintz, Paul George's longtime agent, arrived with a phone and a certain Lakers star waiting to speak with him on the other line.
“His agent, Aaron, for some reason, he got Mr. Bryant on the phone,” George Sr. recalled. “Kobe. So he gives the phone to Paul and so him and Paul are talking. When he gets done, he said, ‘Guess who I was talking,' and he's laying there, he's smiling now. He said, ‘I just got through talking to Kobe Bryant.' And then after that they wheeled him in.”
Of course, you can't have a story like that without revealing what the late, great Kobe Bryant actually said. A few minutes later, George broke down what Bryant said to him on the phone while he was on pain medications.
“Obviously, he was just showing his support,” Paul George said of his call with the Lakers superstar. “He was like, ‘If you need anything from me, I'm here. I'm in this with you.' But he was just like, ‘The rehab is going to be tough. The work is going to be hard.' And he was like, ‘Nobody wants to rehab,' because this is the first time I've ever been injured or broke anything. I fucked my ankle up in college, but it didn't requite surgery, it was just time off. So this was like the first injury I ever had that required surgery. He was just like, ‘The work is going to be tedious, its going to be tiresome, you're not going to want to do it, but my advice is to attack rehab the same way you attack working out on the court.' He was like, ‘You find fun in working out on the basketball court. You've got to find that same fun for the rehab. There's no other way you're going to get through it. It's just attack rehab like you attack the basketball court.'
“And that took me a long ways because instantly, I knew everything he said leading up to it. How hard it is, the tedious work it takes, doing the same shit day after day. That gets exhausting. And so if he didn't tell me that and warn me ahead of time, then my mind would've been all over the place of not being all the way there, trying to do this, not giving it 100 percent, but he kind of warned me on that. And so that second end of attacking it like basketball, I was like, ‘Alright, he said it was going to be tedious, but now I've got to just give it everything I got every time I work out.' That was kind of the breakthrough. But I was surreal about the call. and I was still drugged up [at the time].”
The Lakers' star was a strong mentor to a lot of this generation's players, which is why you still see a number of them donning his Nike Kobe's when they take the court.
Paul George's father says a lot of other NBA players showed up at the hospital to support George over his six or seven day stay at the Las Vegas hospital where he underwent surgery.
“You had every NBA player that was in the hospital,” Paul George Sr. added. “They were all there. I mean they were all in the hallway, everybody was there. So when it comes to NBA love, I do see it. When one of [their own] is down, they all stick [together].
Paul George missed almost the entire 2014-15 season, playing sparingly in just the final six games. He averaged 8.8 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.0 assist in 15.2 minutes per contest.
He did, however, return back to his All-Star form during the 2015-16 season, where he played 81 of the 82 regular season games and averaged 23.1 points, 7.0 rebounds, 4.1 assists, and 1. 9 steals per game as the Indiana Pacers number one option again.
Since his injury, George has played nine highly successful NBA seasons, including seven All-Star selections and a top three finish in MVP voting and multiple All-NBA selections.
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