Paul George was suspended 25 games Saturday for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy, a punishment that will cost him roughly $11.7 million. In a statement to ESPN, George said he took an “improper medication” while seeking treatment for a mental health issue and apologized for his “poor decision-making during this process.”
That explanation didn’t pass the smell test for Charles Barkley. And on Inside the NBA later that night, Barkley said the league’s handling of the situation — and George’s explanation — simply didn’t add up.
“Even if it’s on the [banned substances] list, they would let you take that for mental health,” Barkley said. “It’s something fishy going on here. Now, I don’t joke around about mental health, but if you’re taking something for mental health, that’s got to be an outlier to the NBA. Like my girl Judge Judy say[s], ‘If it don’t make sense to me, it don’t make sense,’ because I like Paul George… but if you’re taking something for mental health — even if it’s on the list — you should get a hall pass.”
George didn’t say he was prescribed something by a doctor and didn’t know it was banned. He said he “made the mistake of taking an improper medication” while seeking treatment. That’s a meaningful distinction. What was it? Who told him to take it? Did he ever check whether it was on the banned list?
George didn’t answer any of those questions, and the NBA isn’t required to disclose specifics.
“There’s never a good reason to take a performance-enhancing drug,” Barkley said. “But if you’re taking a drug for your mental health, you should get a hall pass.”
Barkley has a point. The NBA has a relationship with the players’ union, specifically around mental health. Teams are required to have mental health professionals on staff. If George was genuinely taking medication prescribed as part of treatment for a mental health condition, the league has the infrastructure to identify that before it became a suspension. The 25-game ban — a standard first violation under the NBA-NBPA agreement — suggests the league didn’t see it that way.
The mental health conversation in the NBA has become more and more real, and it got there because of people like DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love. DeRozan opened up about his depression during All-Star weekend in 2018. Love wrote about his panic attack in the Players’ Tribune that same year. Both of them dragged the stigma out of the league and forced the NBA to take it seriously. Nobody wants to dismiss a player’s mental health struggles after that kind of progress.
“We don’t need any player suffering from mental health, said Barkley, ‘…but this sounds fishy.”
George won’t be eligible to return until March 25.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.