Written by Dieter Kurtenbach at FoxSports.com
After the Pacers blew a fourth-quarter lead to the Timberwolves Tuesday — scoring only two points in the final 3:19 — George lit into his team through the media.
“I’m pissed,” George said. “At this point in the season, you don’t have games like this, being up four with under a minute and letting an opponent come in and beat you, especially a young team … You don’t give that up. It’s a very frustrating loss.”
And the reason for the loss?
“There’s no urgency, no sense of urgency, no winning pride,” George said. “This locker room is just not pissed off enough… We should have a professional approach, man… As a team, we’ve got to have a grit and we’ve got to own up, man up.”
“And to be honest, I don’t think I got the ball enough down the stretch.”
The Pacers, at 37-37, are currently slotted seventh in the Eastern Conference playoffs, but are only one game up on the Miami Heat for the eighth seed and two games away from falling out of the postseason altogether.
Either way, the Pacers are playing bad basketball at the worst possible time, and unless that changes, any postseason appearance is poised to be short-lived.
George, 25, has one year remaining on his contract, and because he’s not going to make the All-NBA team this year, it’s in question if the Pacers will be able to offer him a supermax contract, which would pay him far more than any team could offer on the open market in 2018.
But it doesn’t sound as if George wants to be in Indiana. Alas, the future of the Pacers is murky, and by proxy, so is George’s.
The Los Angeles Lakers should take advantage of that situation.
