Paul has been an excellent NBA player essentially from day one, as he took home the league's Rookie of the Year Award back in 2005 after averaging over 16 points and nearly eight assists per game for New Orleans. He's been as steady as they come. For his career, CP3 averages 18.6 points, 9.9 assists and 2.4 steals per game. As of Thursday, Paul has a total of 6,736 assists in 679 career regular season games, which is the most of anyone in the NBA during that time frame. In terms of point guards (nebulous, I know), Paul is an all-time great already.
Truly the one thing that people knock about him is his lack of playoff success. Basketball's obviously a team sport, but for whatever reason we commonly evaluate personal success using team success, as well. "The all-time greats are able to lift their teams to great heights", yada, yada. We've seen it with Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, Duncan and, most recently, LeBron. Titles validate greatness in the NBA to a lot of people. I'm not necessarily among them, but whatever.
Paul's teams have made the playoffs in six of his nine full seasons to date, yet he's never been beyond the second round. The ultimate sports teardown seems to be: "Well, he just couldn't win the big one." Perhaps the most famous recent example of a great player that was always dogged by playoff team failure was Tracy McGrady. T-Mac's individual playoff statistics were still quite strong, though he had the label as a player that you couldn't build a championship-winner around.
Paul isn't treated nearly as harshly as McGrady was for his team's playoff failures, but if his teams continue to bow-out in the first couple of rounds of the playoffs, surely the murmurs will start to get louder. The Clippers went from a perennial doormat to a team that consistently wins 50+ games a year, but, again, it's the games in May and June that most will use as a measuring stick.
I wrote a bit about this earlier in the season, but it's almost like Chris Paul is a given at this point. His greatness has become so regular that the general public takes him and his play for granted. Right around the time he was named as an All-Star reserve, TNT's Kenny Smith remarked that Paul isn't having a "normal Chris Paul type of season." This, of course, was absurd. His statistical drop-offs (where there are statistical drop-offs) are minimal. Kenny presumably just said this lazily.
But there's also quite a bit of talk right now about this year's MVP race. And, of course, Chris Paul is nowhere to be found, despite the fact that the Clippers just keep chugging along with Blake Griffin on the shelf. Don't get me wrong, the talk of James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Steph Curry and LeBron James is warranted, for sure. One of these four is going to win it, and deservedly so. I wouldn't argue that CP3 is on any of their levels this season.
Here's the aforementioned Twitter point:
It took most of the nba world a Finals MVP to truly appreciate Dirk and that's sadly what it'll probably take CP.
— Yao Mingle.com (@Marco_Romo) March 5, 2015
As crazy as it may sound, I think he's really correct. Dirk Nowitzki was always going to go down among the league's greatest foreign-born NBA players of all-time, but Dallas' title run in 2011 elevated him into another stratosphere. The argument against Dirk's greatness always seemed to center around his lack of a title. But his play was so brilliant during that postseason run. That, combined with the fact that the Mavs absolutely came out of nowhere to win it all that year, added significantly to his legend.
Is it going to take that kind of run to elevate Chris Paul in a similar fashion? At this point, it sure feels that way. Honestly, it seems as though he's never going to win a regular season MVP award. As long as the likes of LeBron James and Kevin Durant are running the league, it's tough to imagine anyone really having a great shot at it.
LeBron's widely regarded as the league's top player, yet even he's not winning MVP annually. Should he? Probably. He's had some help, but are the Cavs even a 30-win team without him? Almost certainly not. Yet here they are, right in the thick of the championship race. So why doesn't he win MVP?
Because, much like CP3, he's taken for granted at this point. His greatness is so routine that the voters get bored voting for him every year. So that's why we see things like Derrick Rose winning MVP in 2011. Rose was certainly a deserving candidate, but was he really more valuable than LeBron? Come on. The same thing happened to Michael Jordan. He won five MVP trophies, but he was arguably the best player in the league in several other seasons. Voters just wanted to give someone else a time to shine.
Paul's greatest shot at an MVP award came back in 2007-08 when he helped the Hornets to a surprising No. 2 finish in the West. He came in second in the voting that year, right behind Kobe Bryant.
Assuming he keeps playing at or near this level for the next 5-6 years, Chris Paul will be listed among the greatest players ever at his position. High praise, to be sure. It's just a shame that it may take some kind of insane playoff bonanza for him to be appreciated the way he should.
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