The LA Clippers finished the 2024-25 season having won 50 games and pushing the powerful Denver Nuggets to an eventual seven-game loss in the first round of the playoffs.
This offseason, they brought in some incredibly decorated help in an effort to at least remain a tough playoff run next spring.
Unfortunately, Los Angeles may have forgotten the most obvious rule in sports: don’t recruit a bunch of washed-up old guys.
Now, the Clippers are already cutting ties with the oldest of those guys, 12-time All-Star point guard Chris Paul, less than two months into the new NBA season, according to a new report from NBA insider Chris Haynes.
Paul, 40, looked unplayable for Los Angeles this year — and that’s saying something, since Los Angeles has been dealing with several perimeter injuries and looks like a lottery team. At 5-16 on the young season, the Clippers are already one of the worst teams in the Western Conference, and are quickly collapsing.
The 6-footer from Wake Forest played six of his most productive seasons in a first-ballot Hall of Fame career during the Clippers’ “Lob City” era, alongside All-Stars Blake Griffin and Deandre Jordan, from 2011-12 to 2016-17. Through 409 regular season games, Paul averaged 18.8 points with .475/.378/.881 shooting splits, 9.8 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 2.2 steals per night.
During his career in Los Angeles, he was named to six consecutive All-Defensive First teams and five All-Star and All-NBA teams. He finished in the top seven in MVP voting in five seasons. His Clippers clubs won 51 games or more in five of those seasons, although they never advanced beyond the second round.
Paul had more postseason success later, leading the Houston Rockets to a seven-game loss in the 2018 Western Conference Finals against the eventual champion Golden State Warriors and propelling the Phoenix Suns to a 2-0 lead in the 2021 NBA Finals… before the Suns lost their next four games and fell to the Milwaukee Bucks.
But his family is based in Los Angeles, and Paul probably reached the height of his stardom playing at the then-Staples Center.
After starting all 82 games of the San Antonio Spurs lottery last season, Paul decided to sign a veteran’s minimum contract to return home.
It didn’t work.
This story will be updated…
