Jeff Reni’s NBA Player of the Week: Paul George

By Jeff Reni | November 15, 2018 3:06 pm ET

The NBA has a long regular season. Writers and fans can often ignore incredible runs or stretches by particular players, especially storylines that occur early in the season. At TWN, we intend to change that by showcasing our weekly NBA Player of the Week. Since the NBA season is long (36-weeks to be exact) there may be repeat winners, but the intended point of this column is to highlight a certain player’s ability and team impact for a particular week.

Without any further introduction, the first ever NBA Player of the Week is Paul George of the Oklahoma City Thunder. With 4 wins against the Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Houston Rockets, it was clear the George deserved some appreciation this week. What makes these wins are even more special is that this was mainly done without co-star Russell Westbrook. Let’s start on the defensive end, where he has averaged around 4 steals a game during this stretch, and consistently defended the opposing team’s best player. Furthermore, he has taken a more active role facilitating the ball to his fellow teammates like Steven Adams, Nerlens Noel, and Denis Schroder. All three teammate have continued to post solid numbers in this stretch thanks to George’s willingness to facilitate. This is also demonstrated by the fact that he has averaged around 6 assists per game, which is vast improvement from his career average of 3 APG. After receiving so much criticism for staying in OKC instead of joining the Lakers or another “contender”, Paul is proving that staying in OKC was the right decision for his career. Paul George is making a statement to the rest of the league that OKC will be contending in the western conference in the ’18-’19 season.

🔥#PaulGeorge is on one tonight! 🏀 via @nbaontnt #okc #okcthunder #NBATwitter pic.twitter.com/mWa7W6rNYc

— FantasySportsCave (@FntsySportsCave) November 9, 2018