Depends how specific you want to get with "this way".
Once again, Rey as a 19 year old scavenger on a desert planet was Lucas. The First Order (though probably named something else at the time) as a leftover element of The Empire was Lucas. A "Jedi Killer" character sharing a lot of similarities to Ben (though we don't know whether he was a Solo in Lucas' version) was Lucas. Luke running off into exile and brooding for years was Lucas.
So...the specifics of the story? Sure, the details would very likely be different. Conceptually though, all of the big picture stuff at play here is straight from George's ideas. He was working with Ardnt on The Force Awakens for quite a while, before Kasdan and Abrams even came aboard.
And a lot of these ideas are in the finished film, and carry over to The Last Jedi.
Also, regarding your comment about Kathleen, he doesn't have to "read her mind". He was working with her on building this next phase of things for quite a while pre-Disney-sale, and even stuck around after the sale to help conceptualize TFA. They were pretty clearly collaborating on the broad stuff in the early days before Abrams came on board, and even then it doesn't seem that J.J. radically diverted from what preceded him in terms of the "big" stuff, just the details.