Chris Paul therefore went for his first NBA final at 36, in a team where he was the centerpiece with Devin Booker and he is in contention again this year to put a first ring on his finger. From “worst contract in the league” to “Point God back in favor” there will ultimately only have been a need … for a passage through OKC.
Chris Paul’s arrival at the Suns last year allowed him to write one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, page in his history as an NBA player. CP3 thus carried a very promising team of Phoenix and full of young talents to bring it to the highest level of the NBA against the Bucks, but the opposite sentence also works since these young people of Phoenix also allowed the point guard to know his firsts finals. Chris Paul said by his mastery of the game on the field at 36 years old that he had not lost any of his splendor, contrary to what some thought since his 2018-2019 season. The Suns are one of the most exciting teams to watch play and Point God is not for nothing, however this beautiful story could not have been written without his stint at OKC (2019-2020), which will have marked a turning point in his career and in the legacy he will leave. The person is fully aware of this since he returned to this season in an interview with Anthony Slater.
“This year of playing for Oklahoma City is something I’ll never forget. It was my first year living away from my family but the relationship I had with my teammates and fans was amazing. It frustrates me that the season has been cut short due to COVID-19. It was a big season, a big summer for me, going through things that I had never experienced since I was in the league.
Back to summer 2019: the Houston Rockets come out of a mixed year where they once again lost in Payoffs against the Warriors of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green, spoiler it happened to very good people. The problem is, as long as the previous season they had failed with a hamstring injury to Chris Paul to reach the NBA Finals, so much that year, even with Kevin Durant’s injury in the middle of the series, they had run out of solutions. Chris Paul was having his worst season in shooting percentage, with three points less than the previous season and not a crazy visual impression on the pitch. In the locker room, things weren’t getting any better and the mayonnaise had already turned out, just a year after his idyllic first year in Texas.
It was then that we spoke of Chris Paul as the worst contract in the league and we did not see how Daryl Morey, then GM in Houston, would manage to get rid of him. A swap between two horrific contracts later, Westbrook and CP3 swapped places respectively. We thought then that OKC had plans to get rid of the leader to rebuild the franchise with young people and a lot of financial flexibility but the season started with Chris Paul at the helm and… the magic quickly worked. As a real leader, he led a team yet promised a good big tanking to fifth place in the Western Conference in a season truncated by the arrival of the Covid. In the Playoffs all these beautiful people found… the Houston Rockets of James Harden and Russel Westbrook, and CP3 and his boys finally lost in seven games on a cons of James Harden at the buzzer (it was really rubbish in 2020). Chris Paul’s prowess throughout the season, his role as a mentor to Shai Gilgeous Alexander, as well as his overall leadership on the team will have given the player a lot of credibility and shown how much he could sublimate the workforce by which it passes. Without this high-profile season, Phoenix certainly wouldn’t have traded four of its players to reclaim the point guard and we wouldn’t have been entitled to the incredible 2020-21 season, where the Suns finished in second place. West and went to face the Bucks in the final, even though the majority of the group had never known the Playoffs.
In this January 14, 2022 Chris Paul is the best passer in the NBA, the starting point guard of the team in the first place of the West and he resigned for 4 years and 120 million dollars this summer. This one, not easy to place without trembling when he left for OKC in 2019.
Source : Yahoo Sport et TheAthletic
