Paul George’s 25-game suspension ended March 25, and the 76ers forward came back looking like a player trying to make up for lost time. Against the Chicago Bulls, he missed eight of his first 10 shots and had five points at halftime, then steadied himself by hitting three consecutive shots in the second half as the crowd broke into loud cheers.
George said the time away had done more than just clear his schedule. It had changed the way he felt on and off the floor. “The time off has really unlocked me and allowed me to play free and to be able to play aggressively,” he said after returning from suspension, adding that he wanted to do something special and that the only way to do it was to feel good enough on the court to trust his body.
That mattered because George has spent much of the past year trying to outrun his own health. His season ended last March after he received injections in his left groin and knee, and he later had arthroscopic surgery in the offseason after reinjuring the area in a workout. Before this season, he had already been dealing with left knee injuries for some time, and the team opened the year by holding him out of both of the Sixers’ remaining back-to-backs.
The suspension itself kept him away from games, but not from basketball. George said he was allowed to do pretty much everything else and regularly worked out at the team facility. He also spent time on scout-team duties, mimicking Luka Dončić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and worked extensively with VJ Edgecombe, whom he called a “little brother.”
That stretch appears to have helped the basketball as much as the body. George said after the Sixers beat Minnesota on April 3 that emotions he had been keeping down were starting to surface again because he finally felt good on the court. “Everybody’s noticed it. I’m happier at home. My family, my parents notice it. My teammates notice it,” he said, while Kelly Oubre Jr. said George does a really good job of staying poised even when things are going wrong.
The reaction to the suspension from many 76ers fans was initially derision, because injuries had already kept George out for much of 2024-25. But his own account points to a different reading of the same period: the 25-game ban was a punishment that also gave him something he had not had in a while, enough uninterrupted time for his body to recover and for his game to loosen. He said he felt good enough after the break to play both of the team’s remaining back-to-backs, a small but telling sign that the next part of his season may be less about survival than rhythm.
