Chris Paul announced Friday that he is retiring from the NBA after a 21-season career, more than two months after the final game of his acrimonious brief second tenure with the Clippers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is it! After 21 years I\u2019m stepping away from basketball,\u201d Paul wrote on Instagram. \u201cAs I write this, it\u2019s hard to really know what to feel, but for once \u2014 most people would be surprised \u2014 I don\u2019t have an answer lol!\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul was sent home by the Clippers following their Dec. 1 game at Miami. He had called out fellow Clippers players, coaches and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, a league source told the Los Angeles Times. The person added that Paul apologized, but \u201ceveryone was fed up,\u201d according to the Times.<\/p>\n
Paul signed a one-year, $3.6 million contract with the Clippers July 21, returning to Los Angeles to be closer to his family after six seasons elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old point guard averaged a career-low 2.9 points and 3.3 assists in 14 minutes in 16 games with the Clippers this season, all off the bench.<\/p>\n
The Clippers traded Paul to the Toronto Raptors Feb. 5 as part of a three-team deal hours before the NBA trade deadline.<\/p>\n
He was waived Friday by the Raptors.<\/p>\n
Paul, a 12-time All-Star and one of the most accomplished point guards of his generation, was chosen as NBA Rookie of the Year in 2006 and earned 11 All-NBA selections and nine All-Defensive team honors during his career. He was also selected to the NBA\u2019s 75th Anniversary Team.<\/p>\n
He reached the NBA Finals once, leading the Phoenix Suns to the finals in 2021, where they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying basketball for a living has been an unbelievable blessing that also came with lots of responsibility,\u201d Paul wrote in the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI embraced it all. The good and the bad. As a lifelong learner, leadership is hard and is not for the weak. Some will like you and many people won\u2019t. But the goal was always the goal and my intentions were always sincere (Damn, I love competing!!).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Paul announced Friday that he is retiring from the NBA after a 21-season career, more than two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[795,7,5332,559,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6,2612,5611,8844,80262],"class_list":{"0":"post-601771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-announces","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-chris","11":"tag-clippers","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-clippers","14":"tag-laclippers","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-losangelesclippers","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-paul","21":"tag-retirement","22":"tag-seasons","23":"tag-stints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116065991850204326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}