Chris Paul Told A Reporter Everyone’s ‘Laughing For A Reason’ After A Bad Question

Chris Paul had 28 points to lead all scorers in Game 5 of the Clippers series with the Jazz, but it wasn’t enough to topple Utah as the Jazz earned a second road victory this series with a 96-92 win in Los Angeles. Only two other Clippers — J.J. Redick (26) and DeAndre Jordan (14) — reached double figures in the game as Los Angeles continues to struggle to find consistent scoring help for Paul in this series.

After the game, Paul was understandably not in the mood to answer fluff questions, so when a reporter tried to lob up a question to get a quote or quick soundbite of Paul saying the Clippers would get the series to a Game 7 back in L.A., Paul let him know how dumb he felt that question was.

The first “what” is just such an amazing, confused response from Paul, who was getting his thoughts prepared and looking at the stat sheet for what he figured would be questions about the game and then he gets “Will the Clippers be back here for Game 7?” It’s a question that is meant for one of two things.

The positive view is that it’s an innocuous question meant to get a response saying they’ll be back to close the series out in front of the home fans. The pessimistic view (and probably the right one) is that it’s meant to get the “guarantee” quote out of Paul, but the veteran knows this and wasn’t having it.

When pressed, Paul asked the question back to the reporter so many players have thought before, with few willing to say.

“What you think? I’m on the team,” Paul said. “What you want me to say, ‘nah, it’s over.’? That’s what you want to hear? Yes. Come on man, you’ve been doing this long enough. Seriously, right?”

For whatever reason, the guy continued to press Paul to “expand” on that, which frustrated Paul even more, but did end up giving us a great clip.

“Nah, I don’t know,” Paul said. “Everybody in here laughing for a reason.”