Clippers’ Paul George: ‘Attack rehab like it’s practice’

With two weeks remaining in the NBA’s regular season and the Clippers in a fight to clinch a playoff berth, All-Star wing Paul George says he doesn’t know his timeline for a return, but “I’m gonna do whatever I can do to shorten the process of when I can return,” he said on his podcast.

George sprained his right knee last Tuesday in what he called a “freak accident” while jumping for a rebound against Oklahoma City’s Lu Dort, but he did not suffer ligament damage. Surgery is not an option he or the Clippers are currently considering.

The team said he would be reevaluated in two to three weeks. Although the Clippers — and George — took that as a positive diagnosis, one that preserves the possibility of a return this season, within the team there is a belief that a first-round series — which would begin in mid-April — might be too soon.

“I don’t know when that [return] date is, but the last thing I can do is not be involved with what’s going on because who knows how long injuries take,” George said on an episode of “Podcast P” that was released Monday morning but was taped late last week. “Every time I’m injured, I’m engaged in practices, engaged at shoot-arounds, I’m engaged when we watch film. When I’m at games like, ‘Yo, this is what I see, this is how they’re guarding you.’”

George said he plans “to attack rehab like it’s practice,” a saying he credited hearing from Kobe Bryant.

George’s knee bent backward upon landing and, feeling pain he described as throbbing, he initially feared he had suffered a major knee injury that would require long-term recovery.

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“I like how Lu Dort competes hard. It was honestly just a wild play from his side,” George said. “I had the ball and he finished like through me. It would have been contact regardless. ... The way he hit me, my knee didn’t have a chance to absorb my fall, so my leg kinda just got stuck. So when he hit me, my leg went backward because it’s the only way my leg could have went, was backward. Immediately I just dropped the ball and fell to the ground and it was like that pain where you just close your eyes like, ‘Damn.’

“… The only thing going through my mind was, ‘I hope I didn’t tear no major s—, I hope I didn’t blow anything.’ I was like, ‘Damn is this it, is this what it feels like when you tear your ACL, when you tear your MCL, is this that injury right here?’”

Though one of the podcast co-hosts, Jackie Long, said “dirty player” in reference to Dort, George said he didn’t believe Dort was trying to hurt him.

“I don’t think what he did was malicious,” George said. “He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was just trying to play hard. He can get wild at times, but he’s a hard worker, plays hard and was trying to get extra possessions. I don’t knock him for competing.”

George could not put pressure on his right leg and was helped off the court by members of the Clippers medical staff. By the time he’d gotten to the locker room, before an initial evaluation began, some of the pain had subsided and some of his worst fears had, as well.

“I felt the pain go down, so I was like, ‘Oh, maybe it ain’t that bad,’” he said.

The Clippers are 39-36 and are currently in fifth place in the Western Conference, a half-game ahead of Golden State and one game up on seventh-place Minnesota, and only two games up on 10th-place Oklahoma City. The top six teams in each conference qualify for the first round of the playoffs while the next four teams enter a two-round play-in tournament at the end of the regular season, which is April 9.

The play-in tournament consists of the 7/8 game winner earning the seventh seed while the winner of the 9/10 game plays the 7/8 loser for the eighth seed.