The Suns are up 121-100 with just over 3 minutes to play over the Clippers in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals. The Suns first finals appearance in 28 years is a formality. Chris Paul drains a 3 pointer in the face over former Sun Marcus Morris and untucks his jersey ala former Nationals and Yankees baseball closer Rafael Soriano did after a save. Chris Paul gets a technical foul and some barking from the Clippers bench in disapproval. We rewind just a couple minutes earlier in gametime Chris Paul hits a 3 to go up 26 points and officially bury the Clippers if they hadn’t already been buried. Patrick Beverly pushes Paul from behind and gets ejected from the game as twitter explodes with Patrick Beverly hate. This was a physical Western Conference Finals so tempers boiling over is not a surprise. Chris Paul taunting the Clippers fans and bench may have upset some but let’s rewind a bit an see how we got to tonight in the first place. We can show why Chris Paul is the protagonist in this story and not the villain.
Chris Paul has always been undersized, underappreciated, had bad luck with injuries and team situations. If you were Chris Paul you would also have a meteor sized chip on your shoulder. One thing is undeniable is that every team he has ever been on from College to the Pros has improved significantly immediately upon his arrival.
Chris Paul arrived at Wake Forest in 2003. He was overlooked by the bigger programs Duke and North Carolina even though he was from local Winston-Salem North Carolina. Wake Forest was a middling program that had some good seasons throughout their history but was never a great program with much sustained success. Chris Paul by his sophomore year had the Demon Deacons at number in the country for the first time in school history. He played his best games in college against Duke and North Carolina. Wake would never make it past the Sweet 16 in the tournament In Chris Paul’s 2 years at Wake. But we all know that the NCAA Tournament is a crap shoot and all it takes is one bad shooting night or a hot shooting night from a usually not that inferior opponent to punch your ticket home. Wake immediately went into the gutter after Paul declared for the NBA Draft following his sophomore year. They have only been March Madness three times (one of those three times being a first four loss in 2017).
Chris Paul was drafted by the New Orleans Hornets (yes that team did exist not that long ago) 4th overall in the 2005 NBA Draft. The Hornets were 18-64 the year before CP3 (Chris Paul’s nickname) came to town. They would immediately jump to 38-44 in CP3’s first year in the NBA. This was remarkable in itself because the Hornets were playing most of their games in Oklahoma City because of the devastation New Orleans suffered due to Hurricane Katrina. CP3 would become a star immediately winning rookie of the Year and averaging 16.1 points, 7.8 assists, and 2.2 steals per game (incredible stats for that time, fast paced 3 ball style was not the main style of play so possessions and scores were much lower then). By CP3’s third season in the league the Hornets were one of the best teams in the NBA going 56-26 but fell to the Spurs in the second round in 7 games. The Hornets would never quite get over the hump as the Hornets could never get enough talent around their star point guard. Early in the 2011-2012 Season CP3 would get traded to the Lakers… I mean Clippers (Apologies to the late David Stern).
The Clippers were 32-50 the year before CP3 came to town. However, CP3 would bring an immediate impact as the Clippers would become one of the pillars in the Western Conference going 40-26 and making the playoffs in his first season in town (a lockout shortened season). Chris Paul would form what would be dubbed “Lob City” with athletic big men Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan bringing back the alley-oop (this would make Jackie Moon quite proud). The Clippers would never make it past the second round of the playoffs as 2015 was their biggest blown opportunity blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Houston Rockets. After the 2017 Clippers with the Clippers losing in the first round for the second straight season the Clippers Front Office realized this nucleus was not going to win a championship and dealt CP3 to the Houston Rockets in the 2017 offseason.
The Rockets were a perennial playoff team led by James Harden (ASU!!). But the former Sun Devil great needed another star as the Rockets were suffering what the Clippers had for years and that was early playoff failure. The Rockets immediately became the best team in the NBA going 65-17 in CP3’s first season and being the most efficient offensive team in the NBA, this was the same league that had a team with Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Steph Curry on the same team. The Rockets would meet the those aforementioned Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. Late in a 98-94 game Five win Chris Paul would injure his hamstring in what has to be one of the worst injury luck situations a team could have. The Rockets were up 3-2 in the Series but without their leader on the floor the Rockets would lose games 6 and 7 to the Warriors who would go on to win their third Championship in four years. Chris Paul would have more hamstring issues the following season and the Rockets fell to the 4th seed in the West and would lose again to the Warriors (this time in the second round). The Rockets would trade Chris Paul to the Oklahoma City Thunder in what was thought to be a salary dump as the Rockets thought the injuries and age was catching up to Chris Paul and his decline was inevitable.
What the 2019-2020 Season proved was the Rockets will be regretting that trade until the end of time. A Thunder team that was beginning a rebuild and CP3 was supposed to be a placeholder only finished as the 5th seed in the stronger Western Conference. To put that into perspective the Blazers with one of the best backcourts in the league in Damien Lillard and C.J McCollum and far better roster finished 8th. The Thunder would lose to the Rockets in a very tight 7 game first round series as CP3 almost exacted revenge with a far inferior roster. But the Thunder which we already mentioned was in a rebuild so they put Chris Paul on the market and the Suns worked out a trade for the 16 year vet this past offseason.
Now we shift to the Suns who have had a history of close calls. Here is a link to my piece on the Suns and Arizona Sports teams in general (https://drewsports.com/?p=395), it’s also a good read for Atlanta sports fans, Minnesota sports fans, Cleveland Sports fans, Buffalo sports fans, and maybe I’m missing a few other sports cities that have had mostly heartache and torture in their cities history so I won’t delve too much into the history of the Suns but I’ll mention this. Before this playoffs the last time the Suns were in the postseason the late great Kobe Bryant was finishing off the Suns in the Western Conference Finals en route to his fifth Championship and Phil Jackson’s 11th (Wow is all I can say to that, Zen Master indeed). The Suns have been awful for most of the last decade with a four year record average from 2015-2019 of 22-60. The Suns just two years ago were laughably bad going 19-63. But in 2020 was improving and get a lucky break getting to play more basketball getting an invite to the bubble. The Suns would take advantage of the opportunity going 8-0 in the bubble and you can see the massive improvement from their young core of Devin Booker, DeAndre Ayton, and Mikel Bridges and the team starting to come together. The current Suns are the equivalent of the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers going from bad to talented and just missing one veteran piece to champions.
The main and critical difference is the Bucs got a legendary player that had been on the same team for 20 years won six Championship and spearheaded the greatest American Sports Dynasty of this Century this far. The Suns got a legendary player who had only been to the Conference Finals once and never until now the Finals. He never had enough talent in New Orleans, never the right mix in L.A, a terribly timed injury in Houston when the league thought he was on the decline.
It’s been 16 years for CP3, it’s been 53 years for the Suns. Arizona has had a ton of sports heartbreak and most of it has stemmed from the Suns. To John Paxson, to Mario Elle, to Robert Horry, To Metta World Peace (or Stanford Peace). The story has shifted, Chris Paul and the 2021 Phoenix Suns are not a great story. Their a fairytale, they weren’t supposed to go 51-21 after years of futility. They weren’t supposed to beat Lebron and the Lakers. They weren’t supposed to win tonight against the scrappy upstart Clippers. CP3 exacted revenge on the team that he called home for almost half his career. A team and fanbase that was tired of him, seeing him as difficult and grumpy. Some of the best of all time from Michael Jordan to Peyton Manning to Chris Paul are different cats than other superstars, they demand excellence not just from themselves but from their teammates. If that is perceived as difficult then maybe those teammates and those fans don’t care about winning. With the best players on the Hawks and Bucks injured the Suns will be favored to win it all in the Finals. You think CP3 and Suns are lucky, but after 16 and 53 years of bad luck and bad breaks it’s about time the pendulum has swing the other way. We need this fairytale to have a happy ending. If you don’t agree then maybe your preference of genre is horror. I’ll take the fairytale ending and this road to glory. CP3 and the Suns are four wins away from hosting the Larry O’Brien trophy for the first time ever. If you can’t root for that well then I can’t help you here, the Valley will be rocking over the next few weeks. Who cares that it’s 115 out, that’s why air conditioning was created. Congrats Chris Paul and the Suns to making it this far, just another chapter to this magical fairytale. We have one more chapter to be written, one more chapter to a great American fairytale. Told you Chris Paul is the protagonist, the hero, savor this moment Phoenix, if this is a dream I promise I won’t wake you.