Chris Paul is hanging up his Jordans, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

Sources confirmed to the NBA insider that Paul, a 12-time All-Star and surefire Hall of Famer, would be retiring at the end of the season, his 21st in the NBA. Only Vince Carter and LeBron James have played longer.

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On his Instagram account Saturday, Paul posted a career retrospective of his beginnings in North Carolina to playing at Wake Forest, being drafted by the Hornets in the 2005 NBA draft before beginning an odyssey that saw him elevate teams to new heights and become the en vogue point guard of his era.

“Back in NC!!! What a ride…Still so much left…GRATEFUL for this last one!!” he wrote.

For his decorated career, Paul will be remembered as one of the best point guards of all time. He is a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, has made 11 All-NBA squads, and currently ranks second in career steals and assists. He, alongside James, are the only members of the 20,000-point, 10,000-assit club in NBA history.

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After being drafted by the then New Orleans Hornets in 2005, he’d win the 2006 Rookie of the Year award and finish second in MVP voting in 2008 behind Kobe Bryant. Two years later, Paul was involved in the most famously nixed trade in NBA history as the league vetoed a deal that would have paired him with Bryant for the Los Angeles Lakers. Instead, Paul would be detoured to the Los Angeles Clippers, where he helped usher in the “Lob City” era and turned a franchise once easily considered a league doormat into must-see TV.

In 2017, he was traded from the Clippers to the Rockets, partnering with James Harden in a backcourt that led Houston to its best-ever regular season finish at 65-17 in 2017-18 and came one game away from reaching the NBA Finals.

Paul’s time in Houston was short-lived as he was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Russell Westbrook in 2019. Two years later, Paul would finally reach the NBA Finals, leading the Phoenix Suns to the championship round where they ultimately fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in six games. As his career began winding down, Paul increased his role as a mentor and elder presence, joining the Spurs in 2024-25 to help mentor future Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle and emerging enigma, Victor Wembanyama.

Despite an acrimonious end to their time in Houston, Paul and Harden reunited in Los Angeles, although not with the same success as their Houston days. The Clippers currently sit at 4-11 on the season and Paul has been a healthy scratch for four of the team’s first fifteen games. The point guard had contemplated retirement over the summer with his family, but ultimately decided to make one last run with the Clippers, still hoping to win an elusive NBA title.

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“It’s going to be really hard to find something to fill my cup the way this game does,” he told ESPN’s Marc J. Spears in October, while admitting he wasn’t ready to hang it up yet. “Not only am I playing and practicing, but last night and I was getting a haircut and I’m on my iPad watching clips and shots from 10 years ago and watching me and James [Harden] when we played together in Houston, trying to find plays that worked well with us together or whatnot because this has been such a big part of my life for so long.”

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This article originally published at Former Rockets All Star, future HOFer announces retirement.