![]() The two greatest predictors of career longevity are size and shooting ability while Paul has the latter in spades, the former is rather lacking. That’s a spot on the floor he rarely attacked for most of his career, and a shot type he rarely launched:īut for a player of Paul’s size to be doing this is totally unprecedented. As my podcast colleague Nate Duncan noted on Twitter during Paul’s eruption, he’s moved beyond his decade-long diet of midrange pull-ups going right and dug deeper into his bag of runners and floaters, such that he can score from different areas than just the elbows.Ĭheck out this short clip from Wednesday night, for instance: going to his left, shooting from the baseline. Underlying all of these great performances is an underrated story: Paul has diversified his offensive attack. His outburst quickly turned a six-point game into a blowout that allowed him to rest the final 5:45. Paul scored 14 points in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter of Phoenix’s 129-109 Game 2 win, and - in true CP3 fashion - also drew a sketchy backcourt offensive foul on Jalen Brunson. In 20-20 hindsight, Kleber probably should have lived with the idea of Bismack Biyombo catching it.) (Note also the subtlety there: Paul momentarily turns his gaze toward the baseline, making help defender Maxi Kleber think he might throw an alley-oop and clearing his runway to the rim. Then, in one of the most savage acts of targeting you’ll ever see, Paul and the Suns went at him on every single play, while a punch-drunk Dončić could barely get into a stance, let alone stop them. The Point God patiently bided his time for most of the first three quarters while waiting for Dallas’ Luka Dončić to run his fuel tank empty. Paul quietly hummed in the background in Game 1, with an efficient 19 points in 28 minutes, and he dialed things up in Wednesday’s Game 2 when the game hung in the balance. He hasn’t lost any steam in the second round, either. Next time you hear an announcer whine about the lost art of the midrange, show them this picture from Paul’s Game 6 against the Pelicans. The Suns needed every one of those buckets they only won by six. For good measure, he went 4-for-4 from the line, too. Amazingly, he shot 14-for-14 from the field without ever getting to the rim, instead conducting office hours in his midrange perch around the elbows. (Shout-out to the Pelicans, by the way this Dallas series is showing just how stout their first-round performance was.) Paul handed out double-digit assists in the first five games, allowing the Suns to shrug off the absence of Devin Booker for three games, then bringing the curtain down in Game 6 with one of the all-time playoff performances. ![]() His first round against New Orleans was impressive enough. The Suns have a 125.5 offensive rating with Paul on the court this postseason and have been outscored by 14.2 points per 100 possessions when he’s off the floor. Among players still alive in the playoffs, he ranks second only to Butler in postseason PER. Chris Paul is shooting 58.0 percent from the floor with a mind-boggling 67.8 true shooting percentage and handing out six assists for every turnover. Through eight games, the Point God is putting up video-game stats. The star of these playoffs so far is … a 6-0 point guard who turns 37 today?īelieve it. Yet the best player in this postseason might not be any of those players, as amazing as they’ve been and as freakishly talented as they are.
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