Paul George Should Proceed With Caution

Athletes' bodies barely belong to them. Professional sports have demonstrated this repeatedly and depressingly. Coaches and GMs publicly hector players to return from injury, team doctors are not always altogether truthful in their medical opinions, fans question players' toughness due to their inability or unwillingness to play through pain, and leagues do not allow athletes access to their own medical records. The entire system of sports is set up so that players are encouraged to play through injury no matter the long-term consequences. To be weak is to be vulnerable. But an athlete is also the only one who can assume dominion over his or her well-being, difficult as that might be. Because nobody else really cares.

Larry Bird has speculated that Paul George might be playing for the Pacers again as early as next month. "It seems like every week, Paul is getting better and better," Bird said, probably meaning to encourage the 24-year-old swingman but instead sounding like a boss putting needless pressure on his worker. George is, if the reports are to be believed, recovering from his horrific injury much more quickly than anyone would have thought. He has been participating in drills and doing light work with teammates for months, and there was a video a couple weeks ago of him dunking in practice.

This is all terrific news and hopefully it indicates that George is on his way to feeling fully himself, but it's not anyone besides the player's place to decide how far along he is. On Tuesday afternoon, George tweeted that a March return might not be out of the question. This is crucially different from Larry Bird saying the same thing, because it comes from the guy who is going to have to run and jump on a previously shattered leg.

What will George accomplish by playing this season, anyway? The Pacers have been not-totally-abysmal in his absence, but they're five games in the loss column behind Charlotte, the current eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. You would have to be an extreme optimist to assume a still-rehabbing Paul George would do much to alter their fortunes this year. The Pacers are doomed no matter what George decides to do.

The Bulls went through this twice with Derrick Rose. Before the 2013 playoffs, Tom Thibodeau passive-aggressively left open the possibility that Rose could return from an ACL tear at any moment, despite the general consensus being that Rose was out for the year. This unnecessarily exposed Rose to aggrieved fans wondering aloud why he couldn't suck it up and play. Something similar occurred in March of 2014, when Rose was rehabbing a bum meniscus, though it's not clear if that was a product of the Bulls leaking stuff to the press to needle Rose or a reporter blithely making shit up. At any rate, the sports talk radio hosts were riled, and again they made Rose out to be a selfish wuss. Nevermind that neither of those Bulls teams had much of a chance to win a title without Rose firing on all cylinders, which he was clearly incapable of doing.

The broader point is nothing good comes of anyone other than the player commenting on the status of a severe injury. His body is his instrument, his identity, and also something he has to drag around, bruised or arthritic or mangled, for the rest of his life. If Paul George wants to push his broken leg to its limit, that's his prerogative, but no one should be standing behind him, helping him push.

It would be a nice story, if George returned at some point in the next couple of months. He could presumably get his legs (literally and figuratively) beneath him and head into the summer feeling good about the prospect of performing up to his full potential next season. But that would be the entire effect of his comeback.The Pacers aren't winning the title this year. The number one priority should be for George to get right, whether it takes him another month or the rest of the season. He must look after himself, no matter what others say, because nobody else will.