We’re Never Seeing An NBA Finals Debut Like Chris Paul’s Again

Whatever word you use to describe someone who is a cut above every other athlete who plays their sport at a professional level applies to Chris Paul. Among point guards — hell, among basketball players in general — he is among the “best” or “greatest” or whatever else you want to use to glorify an athlete of his caliber. Now 16 years into his career, a guy like Paul really should have a championship by now.

But for one reason or another, he does not. In fact, this was the first time he’d ever made it to the Finals in his professional career. It is within this that we get to the irony of this playoff run for Paul: As a player, as a leader, as a whatever else, he really didn’t have all that much that he had to prove. If anything, the final hurdle Paul had to get over this postseason in order to prove his bona fides to any doubter stemmed from the fact that he more or less had to prove that the comical levels of bad luck that have chased him throughout his career wouldn’t be the Phoenix Suns’ downfall this year.

Through three rounds of the postseason, that was the case. Injuries and illness popped up, with Paul hurting his shoulder and being an exceedingly rare breakthrough case of COVID-19. Because of the team around Paul, these storms were weathered without too much fuss. Whether this says more about the team around Paul compared to his old ones or how he’s changed up his leadership style is for someone else with a deeper understanding of how Chris Paul’s brain works to analyze, but this meant that Paul got to enter Tuesday night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks with the biggest question(s) answered.

To this end, Paul had something of a free roll in his first career NBA Finals game, and as a result, he made a very, very good Bucks team look helpless. It was a masterclass in how to play point guard, with Suns coach Monty Williams saying after the game that “when it’s going like that, you just want to space the floor well and let him orchestrate.”

Paul led all scorers with 32 points on 12-for-19 shooting and dished out nine assists. The 54 points he generated were the third-most in an NBA Finals debut in league history. Outside of a pair of turnovers in 37 minutes of work, Paul barely did anything wrong, although he did prevent Deandre Ayton from recording a 20-20 game.

After the game, Williams, Devin Booker, and Mikal Bridges all praised their point guard for one thing or another. Williams spoke about their relationship dating back to when they were coach and player for the New Orleans Hornets, while Booker and Bridges discussed Paul as a leader.

The fact that Paul is still playing at this level is pretty remarkable. A 36-year-old point guard who stands 6-foot, gets hurt with some frequency, and makes the Finals for the first time would be expected to do so as an end of bench hanger on who serves as more of a morale guy and an occasional victory cigar in blowouts than anything. Instead, Paul is somehow playing some of the best basketball of his career for a team that he joined seven months ago. It would be storybook if not for the fact that it sounds a little too far-fetched to make it to publishing.

There are plenty of players who, for one reason or another, have a career similar to Paul’s. There are plenty of players who have had aspirations of reaching the mountaintop derailed by injuries, or guys who sign gigantic contracts that get moved around a ton towards the end of their career, or excellent point guards are perpetually able to dictate the terms of engagement of a basketball game. Paul is the one who exists at the intersection of all of these things. He is among the most compelling players in NBA history, with plenty of people who loathe him to match those who adore him. It is no surprise that his Finals debut, one that happened under circumstances none of us would have seen coming a year ago, served as the kind of announcement that he’s been waiting to get onto this stage, and once he got to it — even if it took 16 years — he was going to be the same Chris Paul he’s always been.