If things had gone differently, we may have seen a Cavs team with LeBron James and Paul George playing together.
That’s according to George who revealed on his podcast that he even met LeBron to discuss how things would work with both of them on the team.
So in the end, why didn’t a trade to Cleveland didn’t work out according to George? Quite simply, the Cavs were divisional rivals with the Pacers.
“I thought I was going to go to Cleveland,” George said. “Cleveland was like close to getting me with [LeBron] there. Not a lot of people know that… [I’m] chopping it up with Bron like, ‘Yo, how can we make this work?’
“… It fell through because Cleveland and Indiana are in the same division so Indy was like, ‘We’re not going to trade him to our division.'”
There were a number of other teams also in consideration for the former Indiana Pacers star. In the end, PG got traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2017 much to his surprise as well.
“Boston came up, San Antonio was like a dark horse in it. Kawhi was still there so I was like that’s not bad either,” George added. “I want to say like Toronto at the time. Then out of the blue, [Indiana general manager Kevin Pritchard] calls me: ‘We traded you to Oklahoma City.’ Oklahoma City? Bro, what? Nobody heard of Oklahoma at all making a trade for me.”
Of course, this isn’t a complete surprise as it was pretty well known that Cleveland were interested in a trade for George and had even reportedly tentatively agreed to a three-team deal with the Denver Nuggets involved.
But it’s still interesting to hear from George nonetheless and will only make fans ponder how a Cavs team with the duo would have fared.