Doyel: Paul George makes the Pacers better, a lot better and right now

Paul George makes the Indiana Pacers better, not in the future but right now. And not a little better, but a lot better. At both ends. The Paul George that came back Sunday night against the Heat came back a star in full, scoring 13 points in 15 minutes, making a mess of the Miami Heat's half-court offense, breaking the game open with consecutive 3-pointers early in the fourth quarter.

This game was not going to be easy for the Heat, not without injured center Hassan Whiteside and not playing their second road game in 24 hours and their third in four days, but it wasn't going to be this ugly. It wasn't going to be a 112-89 blowout for the Pacers, except for one guy.

And the guy isn't Luis Scola.

All due respect to Scola. He had 23 points and 12 rebounds in 19 minutes. He was sensational. But he was not the point of this game, not the spark, not the havoc-wreaking agent at both ends that Paul George was in his return after missing 76 games following that gruesome broken leg in August with Team USA in Las Vegas.

The Pacers are better with George, but how much better? Good enough to pass the Boston Celtics, who are a game ahead for the Eastern Conference's eighth and final playoff spot? I asked Pacers coach Frank Vogel exactly how much better this Paul George, rusty as he may be, makes the Pacers for the final five games.

"Tough to measure," Vogel said, "but certainly we're a lot better with him. We missed him on both ends, but what he's able to do on the defensive end is almost unparalleled in the NBA. Certainly we're a lot a stronger on that end, and (with) the scoring punch he gives us on the offensive end as well."

Boston has the tiebreaker on Indiana, so the Pacers have to not only catch the Celtics but pass them to make the playoffs. Each team has five games left. Time is running out. But it's like Vogel said.

"There's no bad time to get a Paul George back," he said.

***

As they waited Sunday night in Section 120, Aaron Harrison told me his crazy dream.

"The whole month of March, this is how I thought it would happen," Harrison, a season-ticket holder from Indianapolis, was saying during the first quarter. "I thought they'd cut off the lights, it would get quiet, and then the scoreboard would say, 'PG 13.' And he'd be lowered from the scoreboard like Boomer. That's how he'd come back."

One row down in the G2 section — tickets have been donated by Paul George and George Hill, the Pacers' two Gs — Amanda Roell was eavesdropping.

"That was never going to happen," she said, smiling at Harrison.

She's right, of course. The Pacers were never going to go for anything as spontaneous and organic as that. What they were going to do — what they did — was orchestrate the return of Paul George across multiple platforms. George's dad, who lives in California, flew to Indianapolis for this event. The game program was printed with George's return on the cover. "Welcome Back PG" placards were handed out by the thousands, with the helpful social media hashtag #WelcomeBackPG. George wore his new jersey number, 13 instead of the old 24, and AT&T unveiled a Paul George commercial on Saturday, just in time for his return.

"Everything felt scripted," George said afterward, meaning fated, perfectly aligned in a cosmic way, right down to the Easter service he attended, which focused on Jesus — and Jesus' followers — being able to return from setbacks.

But he's right in the literal sense. Everything did feel scripted, not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. But the return of Paul George felt not just like an energy boost to a scuffling team, but also like a business strategy. To that end, when a Pacers executive brought out a bottle of Gatorade during George's postgame news conference and set it down near his left hand, George kept talking but picked up the bottle, sliding it 18 inches toward the cameras, setting it in front of the microphone — setting it in front of the Pacers logo — and turning the bottle so the word "Gatorade" was visible.

***

On the court he was special, if imperfect. He stumbled on a fast break, running into a Heat defender for an offensive foul. He couldn't decide between a dunk and a lay-up on a breakaway, going for a hybrid of both and missing it, a shot that had the Bankers Life Fieldhouse crowd of 18,165 murmuring for a full minute.

But he was special nonetheless, hunting shots and making them and tipping Heat passes and stealing two of them. He's a different athlete, a different dimension for Pacers team that just added some fancy fringe to its blue collar.

In Section 120, they were giddy as George rose midway through the first quarter. J.T. Cocherell, with a Pacers clock dangling from a chain around his neck — Pacer Flav, he calls himself — was doing the "we're not worthy" gesture and chanting Paul George's name as George hugged Vogel and checked in. When George scored a few minutes later, Section 120 erupted and the clock around J.T. Cocherell's neck was swinging side to side.

Afterward Paul George was dreaming something as outlandish as Aaron Harrison's dream of George descending in the darkness onto an NBA court.

"I think I can help this team get over the hump," George was saying, "and try to win out."

There are five games left. Paul George is 1-0.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel