Chris Paul, the “Point God” who was a 12-time NBA All-Star selection and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, announced his retirement from the court Friday.
It caps a 21-season career that will surely merit induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Paul made the announcement on the first day of the NBA’s All-Star weekend at the Intuit Dome, the home of the Los Angeles Clippers in Inglewood, California. Paul spent his final season — an abbreviated one — with the Clippers, who sent him home in December and wound up trading him to the Toronto Raptors earlier this month.
The Raptors knew Paul would never play for them, and that led to the question about whether the Wake Forest University legend would try to finish the season with another team in pursuit of the thing he never got — an NBA title.
The answer came Friday. He’s done.
Paul said last summer that he has hated missing events with his children over the past few years, and now he can devote himself much more to his family and other interests.
“It’s time for me to show up for others and in other ways,” Paul wrote in a social media post announcing the decision.
He strongly hinted earlier this season that this year was going to be his last. Paul was a four-time All-NBA first-team selection, and he ranks second in NBA history with 12,552 assists and 2,728 steals. He was the first player to score at least 20,000 points while recording at least 10,000 assists; LeBron James and Russell Westbrook have both since done that as well.
“It feels really good knowing that I played and treated this game with the utmost respect since the day my dad introduced me to it,” Paul wrote. “It was the very first relationship I ever knew.”
Paul played for the New Orleans Hornets, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and the Clippers during his career, spending the last four years with four different teams.
He also was a past president of the National Basketball Players Association — instrumental in getting the league through the 2019-20 season when the coronavirus pandemic struck — and championed the NBA establishing better ties with historically Black colleges and universities.
“From the moment he entered the league, Chris distinguished himself with his savvy playmaking skills, elite competitiveness and intense work ethic,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement released Friday in which he called Paul “one of the greatest point guards in NBA history.”
Paul is 15th all time in regular-season games played and 36th in points, led the league in assists nine times and in steals six times, made the all-defensive lineup nine times, was an 11-time All-NBA selection and was part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.
He’s one of six players in league history to have reached $400 million in career earnings.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was 4 years old, and there’s nothing other than my family that brings me more joy than the hard work and all that stuff that goes into it,” he said in 2024. “Yeah, that’s why we get to play a child’s game and say it’s my way of life.”
Paul became arguably the most accomplished player in Clippers history while leading the team to six winning seasons from 2011-17, including the franchise’s first two Pacific Division titles and three playoff series victories. Paul returned to Los Angeles as a free agent last July, rejoining a franchise where he is loved by fans — but it went bad quickly, and Paul’s last game with the Clippers was Dec. 1.
It turned out to be his last NBA game, period.
“While this chapter of being an ‘NBA player’ is done, the game of basketball will forever be engrained in the DNA of my life, spanning three decades,” Paul wrote. “It’s crazy even saying that!! Playing basketball for a living has been an unbelievable blessing that also came with lost of responsibility. I embraced it all.”
Paul is one of seven players to have an NBA career span at least 21 seasons. And he’s already in the Basketball Hall of Fame: the 2008 Olympic “Redeem Team” was enshrined as part of the 2025 class. It likely won’t be long before he goes in on his own as well.