Chris Paul Is Done With Your Hate

Choke artist? Regular season hero? CP3 is nothing but one of the best in the game

Via: Sporcle.com

Once the playoffs begin, a switch flips for almost everyone. Some players kick it into high gear, while others consistently fall short of their regular season heroics. For his entire career, Chris Paul has been grouped in with the latter.

When you’re widely considered a superstar by many, a different measuring stick is used to gauge your success: playoff wins. If you constantly aren’t fighting for a championship each season, you’re just a regular season hero, and everyone who ever watched a basketball game will constantly bring it up every time your name is mentioned.

Paul has widely been considered one of the best point guards in the league for the last decade. The orchestrator and facilitator is beloved by many, as long as it’s during the first 82 games of his season. After that, everybody gets out their pitchforks and torches, and the Chris Paul hatred mob comes out stronger than ever.

This is the year it ends. Chris Paul is done with it, and you should be too.

Let’s get rid of the base of the Paul hatred right now. Yes, he’s only won three playoff series in his entire career, and the furthest he’s gotten is a Game 7 in the Conference Semis. It’s not exactly a sparkling playoff resume when you count wins and losses, but let's not forget the injuries he’s suffered in the postseason, as well as the key players on his team. Even this season Blake Griffin is going to miss the rest of the playoffs with a toe injury. The fact that something as small as a toe is keeping Chris Paul’s best weapon on the sidelines is the kind of humorous bad luck you see in some mildly entertaining movie.

When you look past his record and take a look at the numbers, it actually shows Paul is one of the better playoff performers in the history of basketball. He’s not only fifth all time in playoff PER, but he has one of the best playoff win shares per 48 minutes ever.

Paul’s problem isn’t just his teammates or lack thereof when April rolls around. Some of the problem does land on his shoulders. He simply is way too selfless.

People love pass-happy Chris Paul. It’s always fun seeing him toss the ball towards the ceiling so Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan can slam it through the floor, or drop a dime that you see on Sportscenter 14 times while you watch ESPN hungover on your couch, but that’s not the best Paul. He’s at his best when he becomes score first Chris Paul.

That’s what we have this postseason.

Where all used to Russell Westbrook going super saiyan mode and incinerating everyone in his path, and we’ve now gone 373 days without seeing Kobe Bryant murder anyone in the 4th (but who’s counting), but what many don’t get to see is that same killer instinct in Chris Paul.

You saw it happen in Game 3 when he took over and gave the Clippers a win and a 2–1 lead in the series. It’s almost like he audibly said “f*ck this” and went into the same kind of mode Liam Neeson did in Taken. Nobody was stopping him from scoring, and if you thought you were, you couldn’t have been more wrong if you tried.

When stuff like this starts going down, you can say it’s luck all you want. Convince your friends, convince your mother, convince anyone you have to. Just know 4th quarter Chris Paul is coming for you, and anyone you’ve ever loved.

It’s a new level of pissed off the league has yet to figure out. He’s one of the best pass first point guards of all time, and that still not might be the best facet of his game. Just sit back and process that for a second.

What the Clippers need is a go-to scorer, and if you think that it’s Jamal Crawford, check yourself into the nearest psychiatric center, because he currently can’t hold a candle to the level of play Paul is currently at. He’s averaging a career-high 26.7 points per game this postseason at a 55% clip, also a career best. If you still think Paul needs to pass first, don’t worry. He’s still averaging 10+ assists a game.

You’d think Paul would start to decline now that’s he’s older. Well, he’s going against Father Time with the same kind of “I’m doing whatever I want and there’s literally nothing you can do about it” attitude he had during the 4th quarter of Game 3. He’s 31 years old, and for the first time since he’s been a Clipper, he just became the number one scoring option.

The Jazz are many’s sleeper favorite in the Western Conference, and deservingly so. What people need to make sure they don’t do, is sleep on Chris Paul in the process. If you do, he’s just going to rip your heart out kali ma style like the villain in Temple of Doom.

Will Paul lift the city of Los Angeles onto the shoulders of his slender 6'0 frame? It’s unlikely, but who knows. As long as Paul is in shoot first ask questions later mode, no one if safe in the West.