Chris Paul is one of the biggest NBA stars, but he almost might not have been in the NBA if he had pursued bowling as his professional career.
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No matter what team CP3 joins, they always seem to improve. He took the New Orleans Hornets to the playoffs after around three years in the league, and then when he was traded to the Los Angeles Clipppers, he made them dark horse contenders in the Western Conference for a solid while.
CP3 along with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan created ‘Lob City’, bringing excitement to a team that hadn’t had much to root for the longest time.
Then, when he was traded to the Houston Rockets, he immediately helped take them to the Western Conference Finals and a franchise record 65 wins. The Rockets almost knocked off the invincible Golden State Warriors as well, taking them to game seven, a game many people felt they would have would have won if Paul hadn’t been injured.
Then, when the Thunder acquired him, Paul took a team that was slated to have less than a 1% chance to make the playoffs to seven games against the Houston Rockets in the first round of the bubble playoffs. With the Suns, Paul has turned Phoenix into a championship contender, with them reaching the Finals last year and winning 64 games and finishing with the one seed this year.
Chris Paul turned down $25,000 to go pro in bowling for $3.4 million from the New Orleans Hornets
When CP3 was a small kid, he got wildly hooked on to bowling. He went to the alley for the first time with his dad back in the 1990s, and he fell in love immediately. Paul would go there almost every day to work on his form and perfect techniques.
After high school, Paul had to make the difficult decision of deciding whether he should go pro in bowling or in the NBA. Bowling was giving $25,000 while the New Orleans Hornets had a $3.4 million offer ready for him.
Of course, Paul chose the more lucrative option, and now he’s considered as one of the best point guards in the league, but he still hasn’t given up on his love for bowling.
While he doesn’t actually bowl himself, Chris Paul has done a lot to help the sport out. He hosted a nationally televised charity bowling event with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Kevin Durant. Paul also created his own Professional Bowlers Association team in 2013 called LAX.
The team is captained by Jason Belmont, one of the best bowlers in the entire world. To this day, Paul has been running the team alongside his NBA career. It just goes to show you another side of CP3 we may have seen had he not chosen basketball. You can find more details in this video.
