Could this be the year Chris Paul finally gets his?
After changing his game to fit with the Rockets this year, Chris Paul is prepared to change his legacy too.
It doesn’t get much better than Paul’s series-winner against San Antonio in Game 7 of the first round in 2015. If you consider the stakes — the Clippers’ best shot at a championship in the six years of Lob City — and the circumstances — a tweaked left leg, one second left and the score tied at 109 — it was probably the biggest moment of Paul’s career before this season.
He one-upped himself last Tuesday in Houston.
Paul’s role is not as the lead scorer on his team any longer (it hasn’t been since New Orleans), but he has been efficient, steady and capable. Houston doesn’t finish off Utah in Game 5 without Paul’s career-high 41-point, 10-assist, 7-rebound, eight 3-pointer masterpiece. In his 68th game as a Rocket, under the particular playoff pressure that has gotten the better of the Rockets in the past, and which he supposedly can’t manage, Paul showed why he was needed for this grand plan, and how he can put the Rockets over the top.
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When you get to the point at which Paul resides in his career, near the top of every all-time league leaderboard that you’d want a point guard to reign over, from assists (No. 9) to steals (No. 12), winning is what separates you from your competitors. He may never have been to the Conference Finals prior to this year, but Paul made the second round four times in New Orleans and Los Angeles before joining forces with James Harden in Houston. This is his best chance yet to win at the highest level.
From the perspective of pleasing naysayers or legitimizing the doubts of the fans, this shouldn’t be seen as a profoundly different season or series for Paul. Were he not as proven a playoff performer, this year’s third round would merely be an opportunity to take a stab at the Warriors. Now, the series has become a referendum on his legacy, the coherence of the Rockets’ plan to pair the two star ball-handlers, and the overall practicality of competing against Golden State at all.
That said, Paul indeed has something to prove by winning at the very highest level. His career playoff averages of 21.5 points, 9.1 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 2.2 steals on nearly 50/40/90 shooting shows exactly the kind of impact he’s had in the postseason, but he remains the generation’s most senior member of the No Championships club. When you combine talent, legacy and age, Paul may have the most at stake of anyone left in the NBA’s final four.
The circumstances look very similar to Dirk Nowitzki’s dogged, irreplicable, seismic 2011 playoffs, in which he ended the Brandon Roy Trail Blazers in Game 6 at the Moda Center, swept the reigning champion Lakers, busted the upstart Thunder, and embarrassed the Heatles. He took the last deep breath of his career and summoned the energy needed to will his team to a championship at age 32.
A look at Nowitzki’s playoff numbers that year (27.7 points per game on a 32 percent usage rate and a 60.9 true shooting percentage) show that Paul isn’t quite at that level, but he hasn’t had to be. In this era, the one to which Nowitzki’s 2011 Mavericks ran in incredible parallel, the best players have awesome teammates.
James Harden (with a 36.5 usage that exceeds Nowitzki’s Herculean 2011) will be the Rockets’ workhorse against Golden State in the next round. He will have to be excellent, raining 3s, getting the ball moving, and destroying mismatches, for Houston to have a chance at this monumental upset. But as he showed against the Jazz, Paul’s complementary play will also have a huge hand in determining the outcome of the series.
This is one way Paul’s 2018 playoffs mirror Nowitzki’s last hurrah — his entire career has been building to this moment. Paul will be switched onto Kevin Durant often in this series, and his ball pressure, which is the stuff of gruesome legend, will be huge. The passing instincts that have made him maybe the most consistent point guard playmaker in NBA history and led people to call him The Point God will be a key for Houston scoring against the Warriors’ switchable small-ball defense. And his clutch scoring will be vital at the end of close games.
To earn his due against the Warriors, the dominant dynasty of this era and the one he has a forgotten history with, having beaten them in 2013, would be special. If Houston wins, they would have a definite advantage over whichever team comes out of the East, and we could be talking about Paul getting his first championship, in his 12th season.
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End-of-career situations take on a different shape for each superstar player, but some never even get a moment like this. Count LeBron James in 2012 and Kevin Garnett in 2008 by this same token. Remember how special it is. And appreciate what Paul has the opportunity to do this year, for his legacy and for basketball.
If Paul’s imprint is stamped upon these Western Conference Finals — and history shows us it will be — we might look back at 2018 as the year The Point God finally got his.