Russell Westbrook's summer party is over and Paul George is a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder. After toying with the idea of playing for his hometown Los Angeles Lakers for one year, the camaraderie that was built between the two stars in one season for OKC outweighed the bright lights of Hollywood.
George was present in Team USA's Las Vegas minicamp and he was swamped by reporters as he talked about his free agency decision. In the middle of it all, Russell Westbrook abruptly entered the picture as he yelled instructions to his teammate on what to tell the media, per Sam Amick of USA TODAY Sports.
“Tell them the truth,” Westbrook hollered at George. “Tell them I’m a bad teammate. That's what they want to hear.”
Westbrook is playing along with what critics have been throwing at him the past couple of years. After dropping jaws with his statistics, people saw through it and questioned just how effective he really is as the Thunder failed to go deep in the playoffs, especially last year when they had a much-celebrated triumvirate.
George could have opted for the Lakers where he'd be playing alongside LeBron James and Lonzo Ball, two unselfish teammates. Yet, he opted to run along with Westbrook's gunslinging ways.
“The reason why I didn’t (take a meeting) is that coming down to free agency and before it was about to open (on July 1), I felt really good where I was at,” George said. “I felt I was in a good place with Oklahoma. I wanted to come back to LA. That story was true. The narrative on that was true.
“That's where my heart was. But this year, being in Oklahoma, I felt really good about the situation, I felt really good going forward, and I didn’t want to waste nobody’s time and take a meeting. And now I’m straddling the fence, putting more stress and more pressure on the situation. I felt good about it. I felt great where we were at, so I decided to do it early, to get it over with, and start to build. I didn’t get that chance to last summer, because I got traded late in the summer. So I never got that chance to start fresh, to work to get better with Russ and work to get better with the Thunder. So I wanted to attack that early and get ready for my career.”
They're in this together now as both stars are locked in on the Thunder for the foreseeable future.
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