Chris Paul gets called out for having manipulated a plethora of calls throughout his career and having gotten himself fouled out in Game 4.
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If there is one person in the NBA today who memorizes exactly how many fouls the opposing team’s players have, it’s Chris Paul. Whether it be a regular season game late in March against the Pistons or a pivotal Playoff game against the Mavericks, CP3 keeps track of everything from player’s foul count to how many team fouls are needed to get into the bonus.
Aside from having nearly a genius-level intellect when it comes to playing the game of basketball, Chris Paul has also proven throughout his career that he can have the refs in his pocket for a few calls. Time and time again, Paul has swayed on-court refs into getting his squad a foul called in their favor by selling it hard to them.
This isn’t anything new and it carried over into this Mavericks-Suns series as well. Well, that was before Game 4 as this bout saw the ‘Point God’ uncharacteristically get himself into major foul trouble before the half-time buzzer had even sounded.
For the first time in his career, Chris Paul got himself 4 fouls before half-time.
Chris Paul is simply on the other side of the foul call game.
Luka Doncic sold him getting ‘pushed’ to the ground by Chris while trying to grab a DREB and got him that 4th foul mere seconds before the first half ended. Luka slyly admitted that he wasn’t pushed that hard by CP. “It was a smart play,” said the Mavs superstar while having a massive grin over his face.
This is something Chris Paul would do in a heartbeat and unfortunately for the Phoenix Suns, they got a taste of their own medicine tonight.
Chris Paul has manipulated more calls in his favor than any player over the last 20 years.
Were a few questionable? No doubt.
But he’s absolutely the last person who can gripe about these.
He knows EXACTLY how this goes.
This time he’s just on the wrong side for once.
— Micah Adams (@MicahAdams13) May 8, 2022
The foul trouble quickly ramped up as he would get called for an offensive foul on Jalen Brunson around the 10:30 mark of the 3rd quarter, forcing him to get benched by Monty Williams.
Paul would foul out with just 5 points at the 9 minute mark of the 4th quarter and the Suns allow the Mavericks to tie the series up at 2 games a piece. Credit to the Mavericks for out-shooting and out-hustling the Suns in Game 4.