INGLEWOOD, Calif. — LA Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue denied Tuesday reporting that he and point guard Chris Paul were not on speaking terms in the wake of Paul’s dismissal from the team last week.

Lue met with the local media for the first time in ten days following the team’s practice on Tuesday at Intuit Dome, a period that saw Paul sent home while the Clippers were in Atlanta and ended with LA’s record dropping to 6-18, tied for the third-worst in the NBA entering Tuesday. Paul is in his 21st NBA season and signaled last month that it would be his last season after saying in July when he signed with the Clippers that he was not focused on retirement, preferring to stay in the moment. In 16 games, Paul was averaging a career-low 2.9 points and 3.3 assists in 14.3 minutes per game, while being a DNP-CD in five games last month.

“We were talking,” Lue said when asked if he was on speaking terms with Paul throughout November. “How you gonna play if I’m not talking to him? There was a stretch where we said he wasn’t gonna play, he was gonna be out of the rotation, that was tough for him, because he’s a competitor and what the game means to him and what he brings every single day. But after that, it wasn’t really much.”

Last week, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank announced that the team would part ways with Paul, who will remain on the roster indefinitely while a transaction can be found. Paul is not trade eligible until Dec. 15, which is when the Clippers will play their first home game since sending Paul home. In a statement, Frank explained that the Clippers were not making Paul a scapegoat for their many problems. It was a jarring move considering Paul’s return to the franchise that he spent six seasons with from 2011 to 2017.

Lue was asked why the result of Paul’s departure was deemed irreconcilable, given that the Clippers have previously sent players away temporarily, such as Marcus Morris Sr. in 2023 and Bones Hyland and PJ Tucker in 2024. Lue declined to explain, responding, “You gotta ask Lawrence.”

After Tyronn Lue explained how the team took the Chris Paul departure, I asked him why this was irreconcilable and not just a situation like the recent past where multiple Clippers players have been sent home then brought back

Lue: “You gotta ask Lawrence” pic.twitter.com/O8IlO27Abf

— Law Murray 🎄 (@LawMurrayTheNU) December 9, 2025

“The organization just made the decision to do it,” Lue said. “But we gotta move on, because we gotta try to win some games. And I don’t think the mood changed because Chris is gone. Like, nobody wants to see him gone like that. So, nothing’s changed — just gotta go win games.”

Power forward John Collins, a Wake Forest alum like Paul, mentioned that he reached out to Paul following the team’s decision. Collins mentioned that Paul was in good spirits with the consideration of his departure from the team.

“Obviously, it didn’t work out for whatever reason,” says Collins, who is in his first season with the Clippers. “Not getting into all the extras, but definitely was a lot quieter without him here today. So, I’ll leave it at that and wishing him well and whatever it is he chooses to do in his next steps.”

Forward Nicolas Batum, who has played for Lue for six seasons, explained that he woke up in Atlanta last week and heard about the team’s decision to part ways with Paul that way. Batum said that, despite the circumstances surrounding the Clippers’ season, Lue and his staff have done well to try and keep the team together.

“It’s not easy for the coach in that situation,” Batum said after Tuesday’s practice. “We’re supposed to have a team, then you have injuries, guys out of the lineup. Situations happen pretty much every day. So, (Lue) is doing a great job to keep us engaged, you know. It’s not easy to find sometimes a new speech, a new — something new to keep us engaged. And he’s doing it. And I think, especially the last three games, he and his staff have done a great job of, you know, it’s a tough time. We’ve all been through tough times. It’s life in basketball. So, we’re gonna go through that as a team. And I know it’s tough for the fans right now. But the fans gotta just stuck with us, you know. We’ve been through some rough times. But we’re gonna find a way to do it.”

With Paul off the team, more responsibility falls onto stars James Harden and Kawhi Leonard to step up as leaders. Lue said that he has had “constant talks” with both stars, especially when it comes to how the team needs to play. And Collins added that the Clippers stars have been “vocal when they need to be, on the court, off the court.”

“They’ve been really good with me, and I’ve had good relationships with them,” Collins said. “Being able to speak to them, whether it just be jovial conversations or we’re talking about basketball, you know what I mean, or if we’re talking serious. But Uno (Harden) specifically has definitely taken the next step, I feel in just his intention and his creativeness, obviously, when he’s trying to just speak and put guys in the right spots. Obviously, he has the ball a lot, the conductor as you would say. But just been very positive. You know, he’s just trying to lead us and I feel like he’s definitely trying to give us more.”

The Clippers will visit the Houston Rockets Thursday, the only game the Clippers will play this week due to the NBA Cup. Lue went on to explain that the Clippers disappointing record has been a result of things outside of the team’s control, specifically injuries to Bradley Beal (season-ending hip surgery following offseason knee surgery), Leonard (foot/ankle sprains), Derrick Jones Jr. (knee sprain), and Bogdan Bogdanović (hip contusion). Lue did give an update on Jones, saying that he has had individual workouts in back-to-back days. Jones originally had a recovery timetable of six weeks after spraining his MCL in Boston on Nov. 16.

“I can’t control injuries. I can’t control certain situations. I can’t control, you know, all that,” Lue said. “When we first came into the season, we thought we had a great team. We thought we had a great chance. And so, when you lose Bradley Beal, when you lose Kawhi, you lose Derrick Jones, you lose Bogie, things can get hard. And so, they have been hard for us. But now we gotta figure out, what we wanna do, how we wanna get out of this rut. Our guys have taken a step in the right direction, putting it in the time.”