OKLAHOMA CITY — The details were sparse, but Paul George spared a few.

Yes, he said last week, he would need an offseason procedure on his sore right shoulder to limit the potential for re-injuring it in the future. No, he didn’t want to go into specifics.

“I’m not going to discuss what the actual injury is,” George said two days after he and the Thunder lost to the Portland Trail Blazers in a five-game first-round playoff series. “But I will address it soon — try to get it fixed and get back out there come this next season.”

George was an open book compared to teammate Russell Westbrook.

Asked if he’d been dealing with anything physically in the series, if there was anything he’d need to address in the offseason, Westbrook responded, “It was all right.”

This week brought more information about both players.

George on Tuesday had successful elective surgery on his right shoulder to repair a partial-thickness tear in his supraspinatus tendon, one of the tendons that make up the rotator cuff. He’ll also have a procedure to address a small labrum tear in his left shoulder “in the coming weeks,” the Thunder announced.

Also on Tuesday, Westbrook underwent a pair of procedures.

The more significant of the two was surgery to repair a ligament on the fourth metacarpophalangeal joint in his left hand. Because he already was going under anesthesia, Westbrook also elected to have arthroscopic surgery on his right knee.

Those injury answers raise a series of questions. Answers for some of the important ones:

How long will George and Westbrook be sidelined?

George will have a longer recovery period. The Thunder are next scheduled to provide an update at the start of training camp in September, a strong indication that George won’t be ready at the start of camp. He conceded that possibility last week when he said he didn’t know a timetable for his return.

Westbrook is expected to resume basketball activity in about three weeks.

Given those timetables, it’s virtually impossible to have any real sense of how the injuries might impact the Thunder. Westbrook should have nearly a full offseason and training camp of preparation.

Even if George misses time at the start of camp and beyond, it’s too soon to know how impactful it might be for the Thunder. George is one of the NBA’s best scorers, and his absence for any stretch of time would be significant. But he might not miss a game, and even if he does, it’s difficult to project what it might mean for the Thunder considering the potential for roster changes over the next four months.

Should George have been playing with two shoulders that required surgery?

It’s a fair question, but George was medically cleared to play and wanted to. And both offseason procedures are more about avoiding future setbacks than anything else.

According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, in treating rotator cuff tears there is “no evidence of better results from surgery performed near the time of injury versus later on.”

Though George kept ice on one or both of his shoulders after practices and games, he routinely insisted he was pain-free. Whether or not that was true — the AAOS website says some rotator cuff tears are not painful but “may still result in arm weakness or other symptoms” — both George and the Thunder determined he could play through the injury and hold off on surgery.

Did these injuries affect the Thunder in the playoffs?

Probably some.

A source on Tuesday said Westbrook was dealing with significant pain in his left hand for about six weeks. Of the procedures he and George had done on Tuesday, the repair of Westbrook’s hand was the most pressing.

Westbrook wore tape on that left hand during the playoffs and received treatment for it during the playoffs, when he shot 36 percent from the floor. But the notoriously private Westbrook kept quiet about the extent to which it bothered him.

It was clear George wasn’t 100 percent healthy even down the stretch of the regular season. He missed the Thunder’s regular-season finale at Milwaukee on a Wednesday, and the following Sunday, after a Game 1 loss to the Blazers, said, “Four days ago, I couldn’t even lift my shoulder.”

George said Game 1 was the first time he’d shot a basketball since the previous Tuesday, when he hit a game-winning 3-pointer against the Rockets.

Is it time to worry about Westbrook’s knees going forward?

Westbrook has had a knee procedure prior to the start of training camp in each of the past two seasons. He had a platelet-rich plasma injection in his left knee in September 2017 and arthroscopic surgery on his right knee last September.

Westbrook’s prior knee issues began in 2013, when he tore the lateral meniscus in his right knee. That injury required surgery, and Westbrook underwent a follow-up procedure in October of that year to repair a loose stitch from the previous surgery. Swelling in the knee necessitated another surgery in December 2013.

Tuesday’s surgery was essentially a maintenance procedure. Still, it makes five procedures on Westbrook’s right knee since 2013. For a player who will turn 31 early next season, that’s not ideal.

But Westbrook missed only two games this season as a result of the September surgery. He missed training camp in 2017 after the injection in his left knee but no regular-season games. That’s two games missed to knee issues over two seasons, which hardly sets off alarm bells.

The bigger concern might be long-term wear and tear for a player who has averaged 36.2 minutes per game over the past two seasons after averaging 34.1 over his first nine years in the NBA.

If all goes according to plan, Westbrook should be back on the court long before training camp this year. But last week he shrugged off the idea that missing camp the past two seasons even impacted his early-season rhythm.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said then. “I don’t practice in training camp anyway.”

(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / Getty Images)