Chris Paul calls return to Clippers a 'no-brainer' and doesn't know if this will be his last season

Yahoo

5 days ago

Chris Paul had options. Coming off a strong season for the San Antonio Spurs, entering an unrestricted free agent market where there might not have been a ton of cash to splash, but where there were a number of teams in need of a steady hand at the wheel of their offense, the future Hall of Famer reportedly drew interest from a handful of would-be suitors.
Giannis Antetokounmpo's Bucks. Anthony Davis' (and, now, Cooper Flagg's) Mavericks. The Hornets, the home-state squad of a player born in Winston-Salem who starred at Wake Forest. The Suns, his old flame, the team he helped lead to the 2021 NBA Finals — the only title-round appearance of Paul's illustrious career.
In the end, though, there was only ever really one option.
'It was a no-brainer. It was a no-brainer,' Paul said Monday at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif. — the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers, the team for whom he starred from 2011 through 2017 and to whom he'll return next season — during a press conference reintroducing him to the franchise and its faithful.
'The easiest decision in this is sitting right up here,' he said, indicating his wife, children and mother, all seated in the front rows at his press conference. 'Right here. It's my family.'
It's easy to forget, given how fast life moves in the world of the NBA, but Paul has now spent more time away from the Clippers than he spent with them.
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Paul's six seasons in L.A. featured plenty of individual and team success — five All-Star selections, five All-NBA nods, six All-Defensive Team berths, five 50-win seasons and three playoff series victories, more than the Clippers had totaled in the previous 35 years. But they were also marked by numerous brutally timed injuries, a historic ownership scandal and a persistent inability to advance past the second round of the postseason — a staggering amount of baggage that, come the summer of 2017, left Paul feeling like the time had come for a fresh start elsewhere.
In the eight years since he secured his exit from L.A., Paul has accomplished plenty. He finally got out of Round 2, partnering with past-and-future teammate James Harden on an incredible Rockets team that pushed the Kevin Durant-era Warriors to the absolute limit (and might well have toppled Golden State if not for yet another brutally timed injury). When the Houston experiment ran its course, he briefly brought the basketball gospel to Oklahoma City, producing a completely unpredicted and extremely fun playoff berth while helping shepherd the development of a gifted but green young guard named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Then came Phoenix, where he helped Devin Booker achieve superstardom, got Deandre Ayton a max contract, finally reached the Finals (before Giannis Antetokounmpo put an end to all that) and steered the Suns to a franchise-record 64 wins (before Luka Dončić put an end to all that). When new owner Mat Ishbia decided that trading for Bradley Beal gave Phoenix a better chance to win a title — which, you know, hindsight is 20/20 and all — Paul was on the move again, with one-year stops alongside Stephen Curry in Golden State and Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio.
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That's five stops in eight years — a prolonged sojourn for the greatest point guard of his generation, with his young family remaining in L.A. as he journeyed across the NBA landscape. And that, he decided this summer, was enough time away.
'This is one of those things I kind of manifested for a long time, sort of tried to speak it into existence,' Paul said Monday. 'But you just never know if it's really going to happen. Because I love to hoop. I love to play this game. But I love my family more than any of it.'
And Clippers fans, it turns out, still have plenty of love for him. Whatever sour feelings might have attended his 2017 exit seem to have long since dissipated. As the fan reaction at Monday's reintroduction reminded us, and as Paul's reaction to it underscored, time has a way of healing all wounds — especially when the arc of that time bends back toward home:
Amid the outpouring of love surrounding Paul's return, one question kept coming up: Just how much time do he and the Clippers have left? Paul signed a one-year contract for the veteran minimum. Could this season be his last?
'I don't know. I don't know that,' Paul told ESPN's Malika Andrews. 'I think throughout this season, at some point — guys that I know who've retired, and all this different type of stuff — you know, and you sort of figure it out yourself. It tells you. But I think more than anything, this season, I will definitely enjoy it. I don't take this for granted.'
Paul struck a similar note in a conversation with Clippers play-by-play broadcaster Brian Sieman and in his news conference with reporters. He repeatedly emphasized the importance of remaining present, of trying to stay in the moment, and of approaching this coming season with excitement for the opportunity available to what could be an awfully good (if also awfully old) Clippers team without looking too far ahead.
'There's a lot of gratitude or whatnot to still get a chance to play at this age,' Paul said. 'But I've always believed in, keep stacking days. And that you just have to show up every single day. Every single day.'
That approach — combined with all-time vision, touch and a legendarily maniacal competitive streak — has made Paul just the seventh player to last 21 years in the NBA, joining LeBron James, Vince Carter, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett, Kevin Willis and Robert Parish. That type of longevity would represent a towering achievement for any player. For someone who barely stands 6 feet tall, though, it's nearly unthinkable — as is the fact that, if you weren't paying attention last season, Chris Paul is still good.
Paul averaged 8.8 points per game on 42.7% shooting last season, taking just 4% of his field goal attempts inside the restricted area and using only 14% of San Antonio's offensive possessions when he was on the floor — all career lows. Even so, he remained a net positive offensive contributor by virtue of remaining one of the league's highest volume distributors, dishing 7.4 assists per game (seventh in the NBA) with an assist-to-turnover ratio better than every big-minute contributor besides Tyrese Haliburton and Tyus Jones, and continuing to drill shots from floater range (52%), midrange (47%) and 3-point land (38%) at elite rates.
Long possessed of perhaps the league's most larcenous hands, Paul also made his presence felt on the defensive end, snagging steals on 2.2% of opponents' offensive possessions. His steal rate has topped 2% in all 20 of his NBA seasons, the most of any player in NBA history, one season ahead of a pair of similarly ageless ball-hawking point guards, John Stockton and Jason Kidd.
The introduction of an all-time table-setter helped expedite the development of the ascendant Wembanyama, who struggled at times during his rookie season to find consistent service, but experienced no such concerns during Year 2 — at least, not when CP3 was on the case. Paul-to-Wembanyama produced 121 baskets last season, the 15th-highest total of any assist combo in the NBA, according to PBP Stats; in a possibly related story, Wembanyama made his first All-Star appearance, and had an awfully good case for an All-NBA selection before being diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in February that brought a premature end to his season. (He's been cleared for a full-steam-ahead return next season.)
The Spurs, who were outscored by 3.9 points per 100 possessions over the course of last season, actually outscored their opponents by 6.8 points-per-100 in the minutes when Wembanyama and Paul shared the court. And while plenty of the credit for that belongs to the biggest guy on the floor, don't overlook the impact of the smallest guy on it: Spurs lineups featuring Wemby sans CP3 got their doors blown off by 12 points-per-100.
Paul finished the 2024-25 season ranked somewhere between 10th and 25th among all point guards in win shares (total and per 48 minutes), estimated plus-minus, value over replacement player, player efficiency rating, estimated RAPTOR and xRAPM, among other metrics. He also ended the season healthy, playing all 82 games for the first time since 2014-15 … and, perhaps even more importantly, he ended things feeling like he hadn't ended things.
Paul feels like he's still got something left in the tank, and the Clippers feel like he — alongside incumbent superstars Harden and Kawhi Leonard and new arrivals Beal, Brook Lopez and John Collins — can help them push the likes of SGA's champion Thunder, the newly Durant-ified Rockets and Nikola Jokić's Nuggets atop the perpetually crowded West. That created the opportunity for a homecoming eight years in the making.
'If I'm really honest, I wanted to get back and play here by any means necessary, right?' Paul said Monday. 'I didn't even care what the team looked like. I just wanted to be home, be here with the Clippers.'