Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

Every game starts with a hug, making what comes next all the more cruel.

Paul George and DeMar DeRozan go way back, to their high school days in Southern California, and they hug before every game in this first-round playoff series between George’s Pacers and DeRozan’s Raptors. And then the game starts and George squeezes DeRozan even tighter, suffocating him, forcing him out of his game and sometimes out of the game. They are their teams’ leading scorers and leading men, but this series is close because this matchup is not.

George is destroying DeRozan.

What we’re seeing is the difference between a superstar and a garden-variety star. There are very few of the former, maybe 10 in the NBA, maybe fewer, but Paul George absolutely is one. He scores at a high level and defends at a higher level, exposing DeRozan — in the final year of his contract, destined for a max contract this offseason — as the latter. DeRozan is a star, but he’s not truly elite. Not when it matters. Not when he’s matched up with a superior species of basketball player.

Doyel: Toronto should be scared of Paul George

Thing is, DeRozan is one of the nicest stars in the NBA. He is shy and unselfish, standing and cheering on his team in the fourth quarter of Game 2; he’d been benched because the team was taking off without him on the court to screw it up. He is completely without guile, cutting his toenails in front of the media after Game 4 and then scraping the clippings off the floor so the locker room attendant at Bankers Life Fieldhouse wouldn’t have to deal with them.

But what Paul George is doing to DeRozan, it is brutal and embarrassing and it looks like DeRozan is starting to crack. For four games he has said he is not concerned with his shooting — 29.6 percent from the field, without a 3-pointer in eight tries — but after Game 4 he showed frustration when he was asked about his game-high six turnovers, twice as many as anyone on either team.

DeRozan decided this was the time to mention his playmaking ability.

"I had four assists,” DeRozan said, looking down at the stat sheet. “I found guys and we missed a lot of easy shots we normally make, so with that I could have had eight or nine assists.”

Game 4 was arguably DeRozan’s worst of the series, though it’s difficult to say for sure. In Game 3, he scored 21 points on 7-of-19 shooting from the floor (36.8 percent). He played 36 minutes and managed two rebounds, three assists and two turnovers. And that was his best game, by far.

In the other three games, he has averaged 10.7 points — he averaged 23.5 ppg in the regular season, ninth in the NBA — and shot 14-of-52 from the floor (26.9 percent). Twice in those games he failed to go the foul line, which had happened just three times in the previous three seasons. He was third in the NBA in free throws attempted this year (653), second in free throws made (555).

Game 1 was his worst shooting day of the series (5-of-19, 26.3 percent). Game 2 saw him benched in crunch time after he missed his first shot — a corner 3-pointer as the crowd groaned — and then he had a sequence in the third quarter when he chucked an air ball and mishandled a perfect alley-oop pass for an easy dunk. Game 4 was a little bit of everything.

Raptors coach Dwane Casey blames himself for DeRozan’s play, because that’s what NBA coaches do.

"I've got to do a better job of getting DeMar quick, cleaner looks, to get him open a little bit better,” Casey said. “We've got to have (DeRozan) playing at a high level to have a chance to win this series. It's up to me and the staff to come up with something.”

Asking Pacers coach Frank Vogel to bench Paul George — and Myles Turner — would be a start. Turner has blocked DeRozan at the rim at least once in each game and six times total, and George has swatted his shot two other times. George first took up residence inside DeRozan’s head three minutes into Game 1 when DeRozan got past George, or thought he did, and tried a 19-footer.

George swooped in from the side, a condor chasing a field mouse, and swatted the shot away. Two minutes later, DeRozan committed an offensive foul, a charge against George. Ninety seconds later, Turner blocked DeRozan’s shot. This was the first quarter of Game 1, and DeRozan was done.

Doyel: Pacers come out swinging, overwhelm Raptors

The toll is getting to him. DeRozan missed the final shot of the first quarter in Game 4, palmed the ball as it ricocheted back to him after the horn sounded, and nearly threw it baseball-style the other way before reconsidering. In the third quarter, he had an open corner 3-pointer but wouldn’t shoot, then lost the ball out of bounds. He later shot an air ball, and in the fourth quarter fell all over himself for a charging foul against George.

After the game he decided he would have had “eight or nine” assists if his teammates were hitting shots.

For DeRozan it has to be doubly difficult, playing like this in the playoffs and doing it against a player once considered vastly inferior. Both were in the high school Class of 2008, DeRozan a five-star recruit from Compton, Calif., ranked No. 6 in the country. An hour north in Palmdale, George was a three-star recruit ranked No. 23 — in the state.

“He was the guy,” Paul George said earlier this series, “I (could) see myself being in the high school stage.”

In this NBA playoff series, that comparison would be an insult.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.