Just three months before, they were meeting at an undisclosed location to hatch a plan. Leonard reached out to George “a good four or five days” before the July 5 trade, recruiting him to do what they couldn’t back in 2017 — join forces. “We met up and we talked,” George said recently. “Before the trade, [even] before everything was in talks.” Together, they have a chance to do something never done with the Clippers. “Paul has always been a player that I wanted to play with,” Leonard said while sitting next to George and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer back in July. “… And I think we got something special. We can make history here.”