OKLAHOMA CITY -- Two days ago, Paul George started an answer to a question about the responsibility of guarding Donovan Mitchell while maintaining his offensive aggressiveness and stopped himself.

"Y'all ain't met Playoff P yet, huh?" George said with a smile.

George, who has made a name for himself with sparkling playoff performances, had set himself up. With the memes probably chambered and ready, George was either going to live up to it or feel the wrath.

With 36 points on 13-of-20 shooting, including 8-of-11 on 3-pointers (an OKC franchise record in the playoffs) as the Oklahoma City Thunder took Game 1 against the Utah Jazz 116-108, Playoff P showed up.

Paul George had himself a grand debut in the Western Conference playoffs. Mark D. Smith/USA TODAY

"I'm going to bring it to that level on a nightly basis," George said. "Obviously, I was hot tonight, but that's the level I am going to bring it to every night."

Asked how big the hoop looked for him, still on his game, George replied regarding an Instagram post: "About as big as that fish I posted."

Great night to fish Oklahoma A post shared by Paul George (@ygtrece) on Apr 12, 2018 at 6:20pm PDT

The Thunder's season can somewhat be defined by the peaks and valleys George has hit throughout the season. The manifestation of the team took shape around Russell Westbrook sometime in mid-December with George slotting in as the nightly No. 2 and Carmelo Anthony as a clear No. 3 (and sometimes No. 4) in the hierarchy. The Thunder were good enough to win often on off nights from their stars, developing a bit of a formula: When two play well, they start looking really good.

And in a matchup against the Jazz, a team centered on a rookie, the Thunder entered with the two best players in the series. That's normally a pretty good indication of who should win, but with inconsistency being the buzzword that has followed the Thunder all season, nothing was clear. There was always this idea that they were built for the postseason, with top-shelf talent ready to shine when the games mattered most, but the Thunder never established anything steady. They entered the playoffs a wild card -- dangerous but unknown.

But George's ability to elevate himself is what keeps the Thunder scary. There is no playoff version of Russell Westbrook -- there's just Russell Westbrook -- but he can rise and fall in terms of efficiency and decision-making. Anthony is a threat to hit batches of 3s and could be a reliable crunch-time option in isolation when possessions stall out, but he has accepted and embraced a role playing off of his co-stars.

It's George, though, who possesses game-dominating qualities, like those he flashed in Game 1. It was on both ends, with George suffocating Joe Ingles and disrupting the churning Utah offense while eviscerating any defender put in front of him. He had his devastating side-to-side crossover going, clearing airspace to launch from deep, yelling out, "Can't hold me!" after one particularly ruthless step-back 3 in the second half.