Paul George revealed his side of the negotiation story during a recent episode of his podcast, detailing why he left the Los Angeles Clippers for the Philadelphia 76ers. George said the Clippers initially offered him just $60 million over two years last fall.
“I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” George said on his podcast, “Podcast P.” “Two years, 60? That’s crazy! I’m not signing that.”
George tabled extension talks in February, a few weeks after Kawhi Leonard signed a three-year, $153 million extension with the Clippers. George was interested in a similar to Leonard, but the Clippers offered him less.
“‘We came here together, we want to finish this s- together. I’ll take what Kawhi got, I was cool with that and we were still taking less. Kawhi took less, so if Kawhi takes less, I’m not going,” he said.
“It’s not about me being paid more than him. I’m going to take what he got.’ They didn’t want to do that … Let me get to the end of this year and we’ll discuss this again.”
George said the Clippers also declined to include a no-trade clause, which led him to request a fourth season that a rival team could also offer in free agency. The Clippers could have paid up to $221 million on a four-year contract, but he was willing to stay for the same amount he could make on the open market.
“They didn’t want to do no trade,” George said. “I’m like, all right, well then it only makes sense for me to do four years, $212 million. At least pay me my money. If y’all going to trade me, y’all going to trade me. But at least now I’m not in a situation where I could have got more, had I just gone to free agency, then just take this deal where y’all could ship me. … They didn’t want to do that, so now I was like, I’m open to entertaining what’s out there.”
George also thought a scenario with the Golden State Warriors was close.
“That was a real thing that was close to being done,” George said of a possible trade to Golden State. “It was very intriguing and it was still an opportunity to stay close to home, stay on the West Coast, and it was a win-win. I think Steph is a unicorn, one of one player, and Joel’s a unicorn… So it was kind of like a good situation to be in the middle of, but ultimately the deal didn’t go through. I think the Clippers didn’t want a certain trade deal that the Warriors were willing to give … but it was close. It’d been dope, man.”
George ultimately preferred to remain with the Clippers and it was their negotiations that led to his exit.
“Just to put it out there, I never wanted to leave LA initially,” George said. “I was not trying to leave LA. LA is home. This is where I wanted to finish at. I wanted to work as hard as possible to win one in LA, that was the goal … the first initial deal was, I thought, kind of disrespectful.”