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How much do you love Chris Paul and his adorable son? This is where you tiredly repeat some joke you saw on Twitter about Chris Paul’s overexposure in those State Farm ads. While we’re all a little sick of the State Farm saturation, he really is a good dude and his son is pretty cool.
While CP3 is pretty cute playing dad, his on-court persona is anything but. He’s the guy who is constantly yammering in a ref’s ear, whether he gets the call or not. He’s basically a dick on the court, which Americans love in all our competitors, while acting as a total sweetheart for Madison Avenue. The juxtaposition is just right for America, circa 2015. But Paul’s Mr. Hyde peaked out in the most condescending way possible on Tuesday night, when he was complaining to a ref.
“I got two kids of my own,” Paul said to ref Eric Lewis with under eight minutes remaining in the third quarter. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid.”
That was enough to get tossed, even in a preseason game.
A couple takeaways:
This is the preseason, so these games don’t count. But if the intensity on display from Paul, Blake Griffin, and others is any indication, they’re ready to come back from last year’s bitter defeat in the Western Conference Semifinals after taking a 3-1 lead over the Rockets. They jumped out to a 24-point lead on the defending champs at half and didn’t break much of a sweat on their way to a 130-95 cakewalk. (Still, preseason.)
Paul is so freakin’ dismissive of Lewis, here; it’s almost like he’s lecturing him on the proper way to address a player of his caliber. After new rules broadened what constitutes a technical five years ago, refs pretty much have carte blanche to toss a player for any perceived — whether real, or imagined — slight. So that’s what Lewis did.
Chris should know this by now because, like he said, he’s an adult. This is when we’d offer up some bromide about actions speaking louder than words, but we’ll leave that hooey for something more important.
(Video via reddit)
