NBA Hater Report: Paul George’s contract is blowing up in 76ers’ face, Knicks have a serious KAT problem

Welcome to the NBA Hater Report: A breakdown of some of the players, teams and trends around the league that are drawing the ire of yours truly. If you’re not a fellow pessimist, proceed with caution. 

Early Paul George returns are horrific

The Sixers are a certified mess. They lost again on Wednesday, this time to a Grizzlies team playing without its best player, to fall to 2-12. This is not Paul George’s fault. Tyrese Maxey has been hurt. Joel Embiid has played in four games and been trash in three of them. But George isn’t getting off the hook here. 

In seven games this season, George has only cracked the 20-point barrier once. He’s shooting under 40% overall and 27% from 3. Throw out one game in which he went 7-of-11 from deep against the Knicks and his numbers are flat out abysmal. On Wednesday he had two points on 1-of-6 shooting in 17 minutes. Oh, yeah — he also hyperextended his knee and didn’t return. 

Nick Nurse said George was close to returning but the knee stiffened up at the last second, so perhaps it’s not too serious. It better not be, because the Sixers are in a serious hole and they’re not going to dig out of it unless George starts producing at a level that comes a lot closer to justifying his max contract than what he’s currently doing. 

Yes, there was sort of a built-in understanding that George didn’t have to be “the guy” when he signed with Philadelphia this summer, but making $212 million over the next four years when you’ll be 35 in March and are shooting like Russell Westbrook is a bust. Plain and simple. Everyone understand it’s early and George can certainly change the narrative on his season and the value of his contract overall, but until he does, this looks downright awful. 

KAT is canceling out his own brilliance

I played college baseball with a guy who affectionately came to be known as “Even Steven” because he would hit a home run and then give the run back with an error the next inning. It was all in good fun. The guy was a great hitter. But yes, there was a bit of an offense-defense tradeoff baked into his very talented equation. 

With Karl-Anthony Towns, the tradeoff is extreme. You could actually make a case that he’s been the league’s most valuable offensive player while at the same time qualifying as the least valuable, or, put another way, most harmful, defensive player. 

The Knicks are the 22nd-ranked offense in the league, per Cleaning the Glass, and they get four points worse per 100 possessions when Towns is on the floor. Teams are also shooting 14% better at the rim against the Knicks when Towns is on the court as opposed to off. That literally puts him in the lowest percentile among all defenders. It’s rough stuff. 

Towns is having to guard centers far more often this season than he did last year when he had the cover of four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert. It’s allowing him to feast on offense as most opposing bigs are equipped to credibly defend his shooting and ability to create off the dribble, and when teams go small he punishes you in the post. 

But defensively, he’s getting worked at the rim and not getting out to fellow shooting bigs. The Knicks can, and have tried to, hide him on the least threatening offensive player, but that puts an enormous stress on OG Anunoby or Mikal Bridges to guard way above their weight class, and Towns isn’t much of a helper in these scenarios, either. 

Perhaps when Mitchell Robinson comes back the Knicks can mitigate some of this with two-big lineups in which Towns stretches the floor offensively and Mitchell protects the rim defensively. But until then, Towns needs to up his defensively level to at least passable. 

Warriors free throw shooting

The Golden State Warriors are atop the Western Conference with a 10-3 record and a top-five offense and defense, so yes, in a sense, I’m nitpicking when I point out that their free-throw shooting has been terrible. But don’t be fooled by the record. This is not a team with much margin for error, at least not against good teams, and shooting 69.7% as a team from the stripe, the worst mark in the league, is absolutely going to bite them if it continues. 

It already burned them against the Clippers on Monday, when they lost by three points and missed 10 free throws (9 of 19). Throw out Stephen Curry’s 94.3% clip and Buddy Hield’s 85.7%, and these percentages are brutal. 

When 10 of your 12 rotation players are 72% or worse from the line, and six of them are sub-63%, you have a problem. Golden State needs to fix this, and quickly.