Summarizing The Paper Trail Of Chris Paul’s Career

It’s been an eventful offseason for the NBA’s second-highest active earner in Chris Paul, as he went from rumors of being cut by the Suns, to being shipped to the Wizards in the Bradley Beal trade, then moved to the Golden State Warriors just a few days afterwards.

But how did Paul go from one of the greatest point guards in NBA history to a crippling contract that has gotten him moved to 5 teams since 2019? Let’s go through the history of how we got here.

The former first round pick was an instant impact for New Orleans, winning Rookie of the Year averaging 16.1 points per game and 7.8 assists a night.

Over his first four seasons, he increased his scoring to 19.4 a night and improved his field goal percentage every season, shooting over 50% from the floor and 36% from deep in the final year of his entry-level deal.

This earned him a 4-year, $64 million rookie extension in 2009, but after just one season where the Hornets advanced past the first round, Paul joined the Clippers in 2011 to create lob city alongside Blake Griffin & DeAndre Jordan.

Adding Paul’s cap hit of $17.8 million was the most in LA at the time, thus making their bench limited (which would be a reoccurring theme over Paul’s career).

In Paul’s first season with LA, the combination of himself, Jordan, Mo Williams, Caron Butler and Griffin combined for $48.7 million of the $58.5 million salary cap, which as a team put them $11.5 over. Not much changed ahead of season 2, as the top-6 all combined for $56.9 million of the $70 million Cap Hit.

Despite not much room to spend to keep this topheavy roster, Paul’s contract was up in 2013, and Paul was deserving of a Max Deal. In the past 6 years, he had led the league in assists per game twice, led the league in steals 5 times, and scored just under 20 a night.

So, the Clippers decided to lean into their big three, giving Paul the max extension, extending Griffin to his rookie deal, and having Jordan’s cap hit be the only other on the team that was over $10 million a year.

While this deeper roster with the high-end talent resulted in a better product for Los Angeles, it still never led to postseason success, and every year Paul’s contract increasing by about $1.4 million a year certainly did not help find the final piece, especially when the Clippers had Jordan’s contract expire in 2015, thus signing him to the max and bring an end to him being underpaid for his value.

All of the sudden, all three players are making north of $20 million per year, which of course led to the well-documented splitting up of Paul and Griffin ahead of the 2017-2018 season after another year of coming up short of a title.

Chris Paul joined another superstar in James Harden, who at the time was just coming off his career-year up to this point, scoring 29.1 a night at one of the highest usage percentages the league has ever seen a single player have. Despite it not being clear how a ball-dominant player like Paul would fit in with an off the dribble scorer like Harden, Paul lifted Harden’s game, leading him to his MVP season.

But again, despite being one win away from Paul’s first Finals visit, they dropped Game 7 to the Warriors, and all of a sudden Paul has to meet with his agent again for a new contract. And with Paul still playing at an All-NBA level, especially alongside the Rocket’s centerpiece fluidly, he received another max deal.

This time however, the max deal is a $35.6 million cap hit to a 33-year-old instead of a $18.6 a year to a 28-year old, which began the moving around of that contract.

So after another year in Houston, he was moved to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook and a handful of first round picks. He only spent one year there, before eventually being moved to Phoenix and hoping to push Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton towards a deeper playoff run.

In all of this time, Paul is still performing at a high level, taking much more of a secondary roll offensively, playing a purer point guard position by averaging 9.5 assists per game in his 3 years with Phoenix compared to just 2.2 turnovers.

But, this production is not enough for the cap hit he’s making up, which yet again kept the Suns bench as their weakness, so to obtain depth, the Suns moved him to the Wizards as a salary dump, all thanks to Beal’s no-trade clause handcuffing the Washington front office.

In an attempt to get as much money off the books following the new CBA beginning on July 1, Paul will not be playing a game in Washington, but instead now joining the Warriors in what will be an assumed backup point guard role behind Steph Curry.

After playing against each other in the West for so long and forming a bit of a rivalry, Curry and Paul will look to put this hostility behind themselves as Golden State looks to squeeze even more wins out of their historic core. And with losing Jordan Poole’s contract, and so far not having Draymond Green on the roster yet, the Warriors have plenty of cap room to bring in Paul’s contract.

So even though the styles of play between Paul and the Warriors at their best, are polar opposites, Paul has proven to succeed wherever he goes, and he turn out to be a very reliable piece of a bench unit that struggled for Golden State in the postseason.