The NBA loves a good soap opera, and this drama between Chris Paul and the Clippers is hitting the sweet spot. Earlier this week, CP3 was sent home by the Clippers in the middle of the night, ending what was supposed to be his farewell tour with the team that he once gave his best years to.
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The Clippers are easy to make fun of. Yet they’ve managed to turn it up a notch this year with the Kawhi Leonard Aspiration scandal and now this. Fans have mostly jumped to Paul’s defense, because it’s the Clippers.
There are two sides to every coin though, and while Paul has been a great player in his 21 NBA seasons, he’s also had his issues. On the latest episode of the Road Trippin’ podcast, Kendrick Perkins attempted to tell the other side of the story, and he used his cohosts to help make his point.
“Richard Jefferson won a championship with Ty Lue,” Perk began.
“Channing Frye won a championship with Ty Lue. So they know Ty Lue very well. They know that it takes a lot to get to Ty Lue. They know what type of person Ty Lue is. So when we hear these stories of oh, Ty Lue wasn’t speaking to him, or he wouldn’t take a meeting with him, or they wasn’t on speaking terms for three weeks, it gets you to thinking — what the hell was CP3 doing?” he asked.
Reports that have come out in the wake of CP3’s dismissal have all painted a picture that he tried to hold the team accountable, from the players to the coaches to the front office, and that rubbed people the wrong way.
That’s a positive spin to have on it to paint Paul in a better light, but Perkins brought the receipts that the Point God was actively undermining the coaching staff.
“It was stuff that kept building up throughout the course of the season,” Perk explained.
“He was doing stuff behind T. Lue’s back — going to players, whispering, saying things and causing turmoil. When the team is already struggling and going through a lot, the last thing you need is a guy that you brought in to be an extension of the coach, to be a positive voice in the locker room, to be a negative voice in the locker room,” the former NBA champion noted.
“I’ve been listening, and it’s a lot of people that have been commenting, a lot of text messages I’ve been receiving, that said, ‘Hey Perk, stop it now, you know CP3 ain’t no saint.’ And these were people that actually shared a locker room with CP3,” he added.
Perk brought up a recent game in which the Clippers blew a big lead, and during a timeout, assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy instructed one of the Clippers’ young players to do one thing on defense, then when the huddle broke, Paul told him to do the opposite.
“He does what Chris Paul tell him to do, and he gets his a** cooked,” Perkins said.
Nothing has gone right for the Clippers this year, and they needed to do something to shake things up. To take such a drastic measure as this has to mean that Paul was really rubbing people the wrong way, because the Clippers had to know they wouldn’t look good when the dust settled either.
This is just bad optics for everyone involved. Regardless of what Paul did or didn’t do, it’s an unfortunate end to his relationship with the Clippers. If he doesn’t pick up with some other team, one of the strangest and saddest ways to end a Hall-of-Fame career that fans have ever seen.
