UPDATE: 9:10 PM EST 2K has confirmed via their feed of their “Road to the Finals” tournament that Paul George is the cover athlete for the standard edition of NBA 2K17. 

Paul George said he was excited for the opportunity especially since he’s been a player of the video game for a long time. “This is part of being in the NBA,” said George. “Wanting to get the cover. Wanting to be the best.”

In an item that has since been removed from PlayStation’s website, a pre-order for the NBA 2k17 game was available for PS4, including 2 Kobe-inspired legend editions, along with the regular edition. The cover athlete for this edition is to be announced tomorrow evening, but Sony may have let the cat out of the bag early as the pre-order page shows Paul George as the cover athlete.

https://twitter.com/its_whitney/status/737779841571782656

This would be a huge honor for Paul George. No Pacer to my knowledge has ever graced the cover of an NBA video game, definitely not NBA Live or the 2k series. George does have history with 2k that would give the possibility of him being on the cover more credibility. He was the face of the MyNBA2k16 App (pictured below) and he is the last to appear in the commercial that announced the Kobe Bryant legend edition of the game.

Pacers fans should find out tomorrow whether or not PG is in the fact the cover athlete for 2017 as the official Twitter account for the game said it would be announced at 5:45 tomorrow. A nice bow on the end of an incredible comeback season. The cover even features George in his team USA jersey, which would seem to indicate that PG will be playing in the Olympics this year or maybe the game is just adding national team rosters to its features.

One interesting development is that if this cover is real, past fan-made covers for 2k14 used two of the same images. This would seem to lead to a side of doubting that PG has the cover, but it’s hard to explain that pre-order page that posted it originally. Here’s each one below:

2k14 PS3: Fan-Made Cover found via a quick Google search

2k14 Xbox 360: Fan-Made Cover from the same Google search:

The potential official cover for 2k17, which uses both of the 3-year old pictures above:

Real or not? We’ll find out tomorrow when NBA 2k makes their scheduled announcement.

2K posted the official cover and it was indeed the real one: