Pull out your Los Angeles Clippers bingo cards. Anyone have the square marked “owner and star player accused of skirting the salary cap through improper means”? Go ahead and stamp that one. How about “losing 14 of 16 after a hopeful 3-2 start”? Mark it. And yes, you can fill in “other star averaging nearly 27 a night at age 36 – including a 50-piece against the Detroit Pistons, one of the league’s best teams”. The box reading “Clippers fans tearing out their hair at alarming rates and contemplating shameful, fairweather defections” is probably safe to cross off, pending review. And after the wee-hours media cycle on Wednesday morning, everyone gets to tick the most dispiriting square of all: “beloved, decorated veteran unceremoniously kicked to the curb in his final season”.
The Clippers had posted a winning record every year since 2010-11, building a reputation as one of the NBA’s most reliable playoff fixtures. Twenty-one games into this young season, that identity has dissolved into something hazy around the edges – and unmistakably sinister.
The decorated vet in question is 40-year-old Chris Paul, who posted via an Instagram story that the Clippers were sending him home from their ongoing road trip. Lawrence Frank, the Clippers’ president of basketball operations, confirmed the news in a statement to ESPN: “We are parting ways with Chris, and he will no longer be a part of the team.” Frank added of Paul, amidst bland platitudes of his status as a Clippers icon, “I want to make one thing very clear. No one is blaming Chris for our underperformance.” Clearly.
Paul joined the Clippers in 2011 and helped launch their long run of winning seasons before departing in 2017. (His eventual trade to Houston brought back seven players, a protected 2018 first-round pick and the better part of a million dollars.) In LA he averaged 18.8 points and 9.8 assists, made three All-NBA first teams and turned the franchise into Lob City with those feathered lobs to Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan – finally giving a long-moribund club both identity and excitement. He stole the ball so relentlessly he mangled his own fingers, his gnarled digits earning a feature in the New York Times. People called him the “Point God”. He’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, all while standing just six feet tall. He never won a championship, making only the one NBA Finals appearance with the Phoenix Suns in 2021, but his Clippers years earned him enormous acclaim. Which is why returning in 2025 clearly meant so much – Paul accepted a reserve role for one last season, and the fans embraced the homecoming just as deeply.
The honeymoon didn’t last very long. Time dulls even the sharpest skills, however intact the instincts remain. Paul averaged just over 14 minutes and three points a game in his return. And, according to ESPN’s style-challenged scoop machine Shams Charania, he had been “vocal in holding management, coaches and players accountable, which the team felt became disruptive”, even going weeks without speaking to Tyronn Lue. Was Paul truly so irritating that exile was the only option, or is management flailing for answers amid a grisly run of results? For anyone who thought injury was the only potential snag in this feelgood reunion, consider this a reminder: losing opens every old wound. What began as a heartwarming final-season subplot has now ended abruptly and awkwardly.
It only makes the Clippers – tied with the tragic Sacramento Kings for second-last in the West (thank god for the Pelicans, somehow worse than both) – look even more dysfunctional. Tell a new NBA fan, or an alien, that this team went life and death with Nikola Jokić’s imperious Denver Nuggets in last season’s playoffs and they’d stare back in confusion. Only the 4-17 Indiana Pacers, a game away from the NBA Finals trophy six months ago, have fallen harder. At least they can blame a brutal run of injuries.
As for Paul? His career will remain broadly respected and fondly remembered, this unfortunate final chapter aside. The one lingering regret is the obvious one: the missing championship. Sentiment surely played a role in his decision to return, but so did the chance – however slim – to chase that elusive Larry O’Brien trophy with a team that looked strong last spring. He won’t be winning with the Clippers now. And unless their early-season collapse is some grand basketball mirage, they won’t be winning without him either.