It seemed like a heartwarming ending. Chris Paul, the man who helped turn around the Clippers’ culture and the transition from Donald Sterling to Steve Ballmer as an owner during the Lob City era, came back to the Clippers for his final season before retiring.
Instead, Paul’s strong leadership style clashed with coach Tyronn Lue and management — CP3 would say he was holding them accountable — and 21 games into the season they sent him away from the team (but still on the roster). Then at the deadline he was traded to Toronto in what was purely a financial move.
Chris Paul discussed that exit on the Build or Break podcast and did not hold back.
“What’s interesting about that whole situation is, it’s probably one of the most disrespectful things that I’ve endured...
“I think just because of the investment we made in the team for as long as we have, and to see the way stuff was handled. What it lets you know is that no matter what you do or what you’ve done, nobody cares.”
Paul played 16 games with the Clippers last season, his final ones in his Hall of Fame career.
In his first stint with the franchise, from 2011-2017, he became a Clippers legend, part of the core of Lob City with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. Those seasons saw Paul making three NBA First-Teams, five First-Team All-Defensive teams, and two top-five MVP finishes. For a variety of reasons, those teams never had the playoff runs to match their regular-season success.
Paul was in a limited role with the Clippers last season at age 40, playing 14 minutes a night and averaging 2.9 points per game while shooting 32.1% from the field. However, the Clippers knew what they were getting when they brought him in: A strong leader in the locker room who would call out teammates but also coaches and management. When Los Angeles got off to a 5-16 start, there was a lot of finger-pointing, and things got so bad between Paul and Lue that they were not talking. That led to the Clippers separating him from the team — the news coming down on the road in Atlanta in the middle of the night (news leaked at 2:40 AM Eastern). That was poorly handled and caught the rest of the players off guard.
CP3 talking almost seems like piling on after the week the Clippers had, where the league stripped them of five first-round picks, suspended owner Steve Ballmer for a year, suspended head of basketball operations Lawrence Frank for six months and fined the team $30 million for salary cap circumvention in the Kawhi Leonard case. Although, is it piling on when the Clippers brought all of this on themselves?
