Chris Paul Is Closing Things Out Again

The future Hall of Famer has stepped up time and time again for the Suns when it matters most.

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The heartbreak on the hardwood 36-year-old Chris Paul has endured is well chronicled at this point. Really, it’s a history so long that you have to take a deep breath before reading it all out loud.

In 2013, Paul and the Clippers blew a 2–0 lead in the first round before losing four straight to the Grizzlies. In 2014, the point guard and his club held a seven-point advantage with 49 seconds left in Game 5 of the conference semifinals—which would have given the Clips a 3–2 series lead over Kevin Durant and the Thunder—but then squandered the edge and eventually lost the series.

The story in 2015 was a crusher, too: Paul and the Clippers lost a series to the Rockets after taking a 3–1 lead over Houston in the West semifinals. The 2016 playoffs brought more bad news: Paul fractured his hand and star teammate Blake Griffin aggravated a quad injury in the same contest against the Blazers in the first round, dooming any chance Los Angeles had that year. Then there was 2018, when Paul helped Houston to a 3–2 series lead over the dynastic Warriors in the conference finals before tweaking his hamstring. Golden State came back to win the series in the seventh game, after the Rockets—without the injured Paul—missed an NBA-record 27 consecutive three-pointers.

But as we’ve seen this postseason—even after a heavily injured shoulder, a positive test for COVID-19 and torn ligaments in his hand—there’s more to Paul’s story than a bottomless pit of basketball pain. And now, after 16 years of crawling through a river of playoff feces, Paul is three wins away from coming out clean on the other side.

If you looked closely enough at one intricacy of Paul’s career, though, you’d notice that what we’re seeing play out is no surprise. For a decade and a half, the point guard has saved his best for last.

Specifically, this generation has never seen a player who paces himself to the extent that Paul does from a scoring standpoint. For years, Paul, who sports the best assist-to-turnover ratio in NBA history, has generally taken the first two or three quarters to get teammates in a rhythm before hunting his own shots.

It was the case in Oklahoma City last season, when he was arguably the league’s best late-game scorer and often dragged a young Thunder team across the goal line in clutch situations. It was the case when he hit all six of his third-quarter midrange attempts to close out Denver with a 25-point second half. It was the case last week when he dropped 19 points in the final period—nearly outscoring his old team in the process—to close out the Clippers and reach the NBA Finals. And it was the case in the third period of Game 1 on Tuesday, when Paul torched Milwaukee for 6-for-7 shooting, igniting for 16 points as the Suns opened up a sizable 16-point advantage heading into the fourth.

Each of the performances fall perfectly in line with what Paul’s done this postseason and throughout his career. Over the past two decades, Paul—who led the NBA in fourth-quarter scoring during both the conference semifinals and the conference finals—has stood alone in terms of players who floor the scoring pedal most late in games. Over his career, Paul’s assist-to-shot-attempt ratio during the first three periods of a game (.752) falls by more than a third (.495) during fourth quarters, by far the steepest decline in the NBA among players who’ve scored at least 5,000 points the past two decades, according to Stats Perform.

NBA, Largest Decrease In AST/FGA Ratio From First 3 Quarters to 4th Quarter – Since 2002-03

(Minimum 5000 points scored)

Stats Perform

PLYR_TM	THRU_QTR3	QTR4	DIFF	TOT_PTS
Chris Paul	.752	.495	.257	19978
Steve Nash	.912	.715	.197	13129
Kyle Lowry	.606	.423	.183	14271
Damian Lillard	.397	.241	.156	16815
Darren Collison	.548	.394	.154	8857

Watching Paul operate, and working in tandem with him, has been an education for a young player like Deandre Ayton, the 22-year-old and 2018 No. 1 pick who’s had a breakout postseason.

“He always gets everybody involved and in rhythm [first], but once he starts to see how teams adjust, he counters and does different stuff with our pick-and-roll,” Ayton said Wednesday, adding that he and Paul communicate during games about altering the angle of screens to buy Paul more space and freedom from defenders. “We know when he gets really hot and is looking for his shot. He’s still a point guard, and will still slip in a pass here and there when he’s in rhythm. But most of the time, we know when he’s trying to take the game over in those late stretches with the pick-and-roll.”

John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated

The dichotomy is fascinating for a number of reasons, both in this series, specifically, and just generally. The heavy dose of screen-roll action, and Paul’s comfort with the midrange, presents a test for the Bucks, who would prefer to let center Brook Lopez play back in a drop coverage, the way he usually does in the regular season. (In Game 1, Milwaukee defenders generally switched such actions.) So Paul’s increased aggression as a scorer forces Milwaukee to work harder on that end of the floor.

Beyond that, the series is rare in the sense that both clubs—Phoenix with Paul and the Bucks with Khris Middleton—feature a closer other than the team’s franchise player. As many headlines as that generates with Milwaukee (particularly if and when Giannis Antetokounmpo struggles late, and Middleton carries the Bucks home), it doesn’t seem as if the star players from either club minds.

“I trust this guy to death,” Antetokounmpo said of Middleton during the conference finals.

Similarly, the still-new pairing of Paul and Devin Booker bore fruit early on and has continued to blossom ever since. It also speaks volumes that the Suns were able to keep their momentum going to begin the conference finals, when they were forced to play without Paul—something that highlighted the growth and dominance of Booker, who had a 40-point triple-double in Game 1 against the Clippers.

That question of who was primarily driving Phoenix’s impressive season—Paul, with his leadership and fourth-quarter flair for scoring, or Booker—likely muddled the question of where (or whether) the point guard ultimately belonged in the MVP conversation. His scoring numbers weren’t necessarily at an MVP level, but they often came in a disproportionate way, when a young club like Phoenix needed them most.

Paul has made a career out of saving his best for last. Now, after surviving a lifetime's worth of playoff heartbreak, it’s just a question of whether he can make the same thing happen at the end of Year 16.