George feels like a square peg

Devean George felt lost at Staples Center, and not in the figurative sense.

He returned two months ago as a member of the Dallas Mavericks to play the Clippers, and headed for the visitors’ locker room ... wherever that might be.

“I didn’t even know which door it was,” he said.

There have been other adjustments for George since he left the Lakers after seven seasons and signed a two-year, $4.2-million contract with the Mavericks as a free agent last summer. Most notably, he felt lost in their offense after spending so many seasons in the triangle.

He was averaging 6.3 points a game before playing Sunday against the Lakers. He has been slightly better lately and had nine points against the Lakers, but his homecoming didn’t end happily. He missed a potential game-tying three-point shot with 3.9 seconds to play, the ball hitting hard off the back of the rim, and the Lakers won, 101-98.

“It didn’t feel good coming off my hands,” he said. “Unless some magic just happened in the air, that wasn’t one of those times where it was going to go in.”

After the game, he came into the Lakers’ locker room with handshakes and hugs for many of his ex-teammates. He’s stayed in contact with Luke Walton and Brian Cook, and dined with them Saturday night at a Redondo Beach restaurant.

He missed them earlier in the season, when his shot wasn’t falling and the minutes weren’t coming for him in a very deep Dallas lineup.

“The triangle had me screwed up,” he said. “I was just like a fish out of water. My brain was hurting. I was having headaches. The best thing is, the coaches were real patient. They were still sticking with me, encouraging me. I’ve been in one system my whole career.”

All along, he had a fairly important person in his corner in Dallas ... the guy signing his paycheck.

“I don’t know how [the Lakers] let him get away, I swear,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. “Just looking at the offensive stats, OK, maybe he wasn’t a big impact player, but Phil [Jackson] in the past has called him his best perimeter defender. He was right. Phil got that right and we thank him.”

George averaged six points a game in his career with the Lakers.

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It seems like a good partnership, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Andrew Bynum, the league’s all-time leading scorer teaching the Lakers’ teenager about footwork, positioning on the court and other nuances on offense and defense.

How long will it last? Abdul-Jabbar is in his second season as Bynum’s mentor, and Jackson, as usual, is unwilling to gaze too far into the future.

“We usually say big guys, they’re not going to mature fully until maybe 24 to 26 years of age, physically, putting it all together,” Jackson said. “I don’t know what Kareem’s future’s about. That’s something entirely up to him. I don’t know what receptivity Andrew’s going to have two, three years down the road. We think this experience is just the right phase for this time in his career.”

At the very least, Abdul-Jabbar wants Bynum to try one thing.

“He says he can’t wait for me to throw a sky hook,” Bynum said. “Just one.”

Times staff writer Steve Springer contributed to this report.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com