Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George appears to be on a search for an alleged hit-and-run driver. He asked his 9 million Instagram followers to help him identify a kid who allegedly hit his car and bounced.
“This kid hit and run my brand new car today,” the 32-year-old said in the since-deleted post, “Then dipped without giving me his driver’s license. If you know him, tag him 😩😩😩😩😩”
“Anybody know who this kid is. DM me.”
We don’t know when and where the alleged crash happened. On the basketball side of things, PG-13 sat out Wednesday’s loss to the Utah Jazz with a hamstring injury.
PG-13’s wife Daniela Rajic-George wrote on her IG story hours later, “GOT HIM!!! TY IG.” She also deleted the post.
There are people on the internet suggesting that George shouldn’t be going after a kid because he’s an NBA player with hundreds of millions of dollars, he can just buy a new car.
That’s the wrong attitude and position to take. It doesn’t matter if George is uber rich or a working-class person. People need to be held accountable. That’s what car insurance if for. You get into an accident or you hit another car or whatever, you exchange information and the insurance companies work it out.
The only thing about this situation that was dangerous or problematic was posting the image of the young man on social media. You understand what George was trying to do, but whenever a famous person asks the internet to “do its thing” it can have negative consequences.
Fans can be irrational and take things too far. If this young man’s personal information was revealed, who knows what could’ve happened. Thankfully, nothing like that has happened as far as we know.
On the court the Clippers are 23-24 and sit eighth in the Western Conference as of Friday morning. They rank 25th in aNET rating, 29th in aORTG, and ninth in aDRTG.
This was a team that many prognosticators predicted would advance to the conference finals this season, but George and his superstar running mate Kawhi Leonard have missed a combined 34 games.
We are past the halfway point of the season, and it’s time for the Clippers to start stringing together some wins and figuring themselves out on the offensive end. George knows the team needs to play with urgency.
“I mean, it’s now,” George said. “We’ve just been behind the ball just in terms of injuries and lineups and guys in and out. Urgency starts now. We’ve got to start playing with some desperation.”
With the February trade deadline approaching maybe the Clippers consolidate and get a guard like Mike Conley to help shoulder the backup minutes with John Wall, who is now injured. Maybe the try and get a better backup center for Ivica Zubac.
Whatever they decide, the Clippers need a healthy George and Leonard if they are going to compete in the playoffs this season. They’ve been intentional with how they’ve managed both so they are at their healthiest when the games matter most. If they don’t start figuring it out, they may not make it to the games that matter.
