When we look back on the Steph Curry era of the Golden State Warriors, the most prominent enemy of the team was clearly LeBron James. If the Warriors were the X-Men, James is Magneto, leading an ever-changing, ever-relocating Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But Chris Paul was more like the Doctor Octopus to Curry\u2019s Spider-Man, a highly intelligent, stocky man doomed to continually fall short against his rival, undone by injuries, bad luck, the resourcefulness of his opponent and too much whining. Wait, that last one doesn\u2019t really describe Doc Ock.<\/p>\n
Paul ended his 21-season NBA career Friday after being waived by the Toronto Raptors. It really ended when his fairy tale return to the Los Angeles Clippers turned into one of those old, gruesome fairy tales, and Paul was sent home by the team for yelling at his teammates and coaches too much. In other words, acting too much like Chris Paul.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the culmination of a career that saw Paul made 12 All-Star teams, win six steals titles, and lead the league in assists five times. He finishes with this second-most steals and assists in NBA history while playing for seven different teams, including a strange year with the Warriors in 2023-24. That was like the rare occasions when Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man teamed up, to shut down a nuclear reactor or save someone from being poisoned or dump Jordan Poole\u2019s long-term contract while pretending they were going to trade Doctor Octopus for a veteran superhero.<\/p>\n
But for the Warriors, he was absolutely a supervillain. Paul\u2019s Los Angeles Clippers defeated the Warriors in the 2014 playoffs in a physical series that may have been responsible for Curry\u2019s mid-career visit to the gun show. Paul and the Clippers lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the next round, thanks to Paul trying to get a three-shot foul late in the fourth quarter, turning the ball over, and losing on the cusp of victory, a common theme for both supervillains and Chris Paul.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the Warriors seemed on a collision course with the Lob City Clippers on the way to their first title, but the Clippers blew a 19-point lead late in a closeout game to the Houston Rockets and lost in the second round. Paul never made the conference finals with the Clippers.<\/p>\n
Paul moved to the Houston Rockets, where he solidified a very good team alongside James Harden. The Rockets were about to go up 3-2 in the Western Conference Finals against the Dubs when Paul tempted fate by doing Curry\u2019s shimmy in his face.<\/p>\n
The basketball gods responded by tearing Paul\u2019s hamstring late in Game 5. The Rockets would lose with Paul on the sidelines and lose to the Warriors again with a healthy Paul in 2019. Then Paul became an NBA nomad, going from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Phoenix Suns, who lost the Finals in Paul\u2019s only career trip in 2021.<\/p>\n
It looked like the Warriors might have a fourth playoff battle with CP3 in 2022, but it was not to be. Leading the Dallas Mavericks 3-2, the Suns were outscored by 60 combined points in their Games 6 and 7 losses. New owner Mat Ishbia made trades for Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal in 2023, and Paul headed to Golden State for a very weird partnership.<\/p>\n
Honestly, it\u2019s kind of like when Doctor Octopus inhabited Spider-Man\u2019s body for a while. Like Paul, Doc Ock\u2019s body was wasting away from years of physical battles, wear and tear, and illegally grabbing people. Somehow he switched minds, inhabited Peter Parker\u2019s body and fell in love with a little person named Anna Maria Marconi, which is a lot like Steve Kerr\u2019s preferred guard-heavy lineups that season. Ultimately, Doctor Octopus lets his consciousness fade away from Spider-Man\u2019s body, just like how the Warriors let Paul\u2019s large contract expire instead of using it in trades.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a common comic book trope: The villain joins up with the heroes and shows he\u2019s not that bad, even though he moves on and proves, like Paul did with the Clippers this season, that ultimately the villain won\u2019t change their evil annoying ways.<\/p>\n
Paul had a great career and was one of the most impactful ultra-short players in NBA history, joining Isiah Thomas, Allen Iverson, Tim Hardaway, Nate \u201cTiny\u201d Archibald, and Slater Martin. There\u2019s no word yet whether his twin brother Cliff Paul will also be retiring from his job as an insurance agent, but Jake from State Farm is scheduled to make an announcement next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we look back on the Steph Curry era of the Golden State Warriors, the most prominent enemy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,4025,4024,6,37651,255,22519],"class_list":{"0":"post-605052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-goldenstate","12":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-news-and-rumors","15":"tag-warriors","16":"tag-warriors-history"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116076373120292710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605052","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=605052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}