Despite eight All-NBA nods, nine All-Defensive team appearances and a resume worthy of the Hall of Fame if he retired today, Chris Paul has faced scrutiny for his playoff shortcomings. After all, the Houston guard had not led a team to even the Conference Finals over the course of his first 12 years in the league and, because of his impressive body of work, those failures rest at his feet in the minds of many evaluating the game.
However, Paul was utterly tremendous in leading the Rockets to a series-clinching, Game 5 win over the Utah Jazz. He even made some statistical history with his performance. It was the kind of game that served as a reminder that the narrative arc surrounding Paul’s perceived individual failures in the postseason are generally flawed.
In short, Chris Paul hasn’t been bad in the NBA Playoffs. In fact, he’s been quite good over an 86-game postseason sample. To illustrate this, let’s look at the numbers: In 892 regular season games, Paul averages 18.7 points, 9.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 2.3 steals per game, while posting fantastic efficiency via a 25.6 PER and a 58.1 percent true shooting. In the aforementioned 86 postseason games, a similar story is told. Paul averages 21.5 points, 9.1 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game while putting up a 58.5 percent true shooting and a 25.7 PER.
In short, both sets of numbers are tremendous (if not eerily similar) and, considering Paul’s overall profile as a regular season player doesn’t appear to be in question, it is odd that his individual playoff performance has been. Of course, athletes (and NBA players, in particular) are judged heavily on team success and, as the entire theme in this space dictates, it just hasn’t been there.
Paul’s teams have now won six playoff series (including two this season in Houston) but, almost more importantly, it has to be noted that his playoff exists did not come in brutal fashion, aside from one very obvious exception that we’ll get to shortly. Teams led by Paul have fallen as slight seeding favorites on a few occasions, beginning in his first playoff run with the New Orleans Hornets in 2008.
In that second-round series, a then 23-year-old Paul was vanquished in seven games by the San Antonio Spurs, and the Hornets did fall in the clinching game at home. Paul scored 18 points and dished out 14 assists in that particular loss. New Orleans was also a team with little playoff pedigree, while their opponent had Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Gregg Popovich and Tony Parker.
Since then, Paul has endured some other somewhat controversial exits, including the loss of four straight games to the No. 5 seed Memphis Grizzlies in 2013. Recently, though, the deck has been stacked against Paul in a fashion that seems to be generally ignored.
In 2016, the Paul-led Clippers may not have reached the Western Conference Finals, but Los Angeles took a 2-0 lead against the Blazers and were in full control before both Paul and Blake Griffin missed the final two games with injury in a six-game defeat. In the next season, Paul’s partner-in-crime again suffered an injury, when Griffin played only three games (with the Clippers winning two) in a seven-game loss to the Jazz. In that series, Paul averaged 25 points and 10 assists per game.
The elephant in the room is, of course, the 2015 NBA Playoffs. The demise of the Clippers as a basketball entity can arguably be traced to the now-infamous series loss against the Houston Rockets, to the point that Paul recently couldn’t help but reference (in NSFW fashion) the way that things flew off the rails in that series.
Los Angeles utterly imploded in Game 6 against the Rockets, losing the fourth quarter in memorable 40-15 fashion as Paul and his teammates committed gaffe after gaffe. The collapse was complete in Game 7. Even with full knowledge that Paul posted strong numbers (21 points and 10 assists per game) while missing two contests with injury, the 2015 playoff exit will be the point of reference for every Paul skeptic from now until he wins an NBA title, should that ever occur.
With all of that said, there are a number of future Hall of Fame contributors (including the now-infallible LeBron James) that have suffered extremely public playoff issues and, fittingly, Paul’s current cohort, James Harden, is on that list for his individual collapse last year. Regardless, Paul’s overall playoff performance, as the leader of upstart teams in New Orleans and the co-headliner in Los Angeles, has become underrated as a result of the flawed narrative associated with his early summer vacations.
The Rockets must face the Golden State Warriors with the prize of an NBA Finals berth on the line and, even with home-court advantage, most do not believe Houston will be able to scale the wall that is the defending champions from Oakland. Still, it is a safe bet to predict that if the Rockets fall, quips will be made about Chris Paul’s performance in the series and his apparent inability to advance past what would be a moving target. Given history, however, it likely won’t be the result of Paul failing to rise to the occasion.
