On December 26, Beijing time, the Christmas war came as scheduled, but off the court, there was a very bad news on the Clippers, who did not have a game - according to foreign media reports, Clippers player Paul George will miss 3-4 weeks because of a torn right elbow ligament.
George missed two weeks of games after spraining his elbow during the December 7 game against the Trail Blazers, and in the past two games, George has returned, but after feeling pain, he was examined again, and the results showed a torn paraligament, and before making further decisions, the Clippers need to watch George recover from injury after 3-4 weeks, which means George may be missing more time.
For the Clippers, this is undoubtedly worse.
So far this season, George has played in 26 games, averaging 24.7 points, 7.1 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.0 steals per game, 13th in the league, 3rd in the steals league, 42.1%/32.3%/88.0% in three shooting, and 52.8% in true shooting.
George's career has always been an efficient scorer, but this season, his scoring efficiency has declined, with an effective shooting rate of only 48.4%, which ranks second-lowest in George's career, and the 32.3% three-point shooting rate is also the lowest since George's rookie, as a comparison, in the past two seasons, George's three-point shooting rate is 41.1% and 41.2%, respectively.
In fact, at the beginning of the season, George's performance was still very amazing, scoring 40+ twice in the first two weeks of the season, but as the season deepened, George received more targeted defenses, and his high-scoring games gradually decreased, and in the past nearly two months, he has won a total of 2 games 30+.
In Leonard's absence, George had to carry more possession, and his use of the ball reached 33.2 percent this season, the fifth-highest number in the league, and also George's career highest, much higher than George's best 2018-19 season (28.5 percent).
George originally had this "super ghost" attribute, suddenly adding so much ball power that it was difficult to digest it efficiently and fully understandable, but this did not prevent him from being important to the Clippers, not only on the offensive end, but also on the defensive end — this season George's players can shoot 43.0 percent from the field and only 28.7 percent from three-point range, and he's one of the best three-pointers in the league.
Look at the Clippers, the so-called roof leaks in the overnight rain, probably so.
Originally, the Clippers had lost Leonard and let a superstar, and now George is injured again, and may also be injured for more than a month, directly letting the two superstars.
Not only that, but Morris Jr. and Reggie Jr. were also quarantined for health and safety agreements, and Kennard's hip was also injured — the above five happened to be in the clippers' top six annual salaries (the other was Bledsoe).
On the bright side, the Clippers aren't doing badly right now, 17-15, fifth in the West, but this fifth in the West is very volatile, and they're only two wins ahead of the 9th-place Timberwolves in the West (15-17) and could fall out of the top eight in a week.
The Clippers' goal this season was to make the playoffs, and when it comes to the playoffs, Leonard is expected to return, and they will still be a championship team, but now, whether they can make the playoffs is already a problem.
This is leonard and george's third season, and each of these seasons has its own twists and turns:
——The first year was a huge one, leading the Nuggets 3-1 in the second round of the playoffs, and seeing that this was about to create team history to reach the Western Conference Finals, the result was reversed by the opponent's three consecutive cities
The second year was still brave, leonard was injured in the second round of the playoffs and crossed the league's number one Jazz, but unfortunately the West was not against the Suns
This year, unlike the past two years, injuries are the Clippers' biggest enemy, and I hope George can make an early comeback, as long as he and Leonard can return healthy in the playoffs, there is still no team to look down on them.