The NBA’s greatest players cast shadows so long that even a future first-ballot Hall of Famer can be eclipsed.
Once Chris Paul retires at season’s end, he’s destined to receive the John Stockton treatment. Stockton, of course, is the only player who ranks above Paul on the NBA’s all-time lists for assists and steals, but history remembers him mostly as one of the many 1990s legends who never won a championship thanks to Michael Jordan. Like Stockton, Paul is a brilliant and feisty undersized point guard who displayed amazing longevity. Like Stockton, Paul will exit the game with a stacked resume but no rings, barring a miracle. And like Stockton and his Jordan dilemma, Paul will be passed over by future generations in favor of Stephen Curry, whose rocket ship to basketball immortality came directly at Paul’s expense.
Paul, 40, never won a championship, but he came awfully close in 2021; Curry led a four-ring dynasty. Paul never won an MVP award, but he finished second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh during his 20s; Curry won two MVP awards, one unanimously. Paul played big minutes for two Olympic gold medal-winning teams; Curry took down Serbia and France at the Paris Olympics with arguably the most dramatic clutch performances in the history of the U.S. men’s basketball program. And in an unforgettable 2018 Western Conference finals showdown, Curry scored 27 points in Game 7 to help the Golden State Warriors outlast the Houston Rockets, who blew a 3-2 series lead without an injured Paul in the final two games. Curry’s Warriors prevailed over Paul’s Rockets in the 2019 playoff rematch, too.
But this is precisely what people mean when they say comparison is the thief of joy: Though Curry has become the standard for point guards, Paul’s 21 years of mastery deserve a more nuanced appreciation.
Paul, who first hinted in July that his career would end after the 2025-26 season, announced Saturday that he was “grateful” to be enjoying his “last” ride. Remarkably, more than two decades have passed since Paul arrived in the NBA from Wake Forest and promptly won rookie of the year honors. By his third season, he was an all-star, an MVP runner-up, a first team all-NBA selection and the league’s leader in assists and steals.
Those early-career New Orleans Hornets days are easy to forget — the franchise was temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City because of Hurricane Katrina, and the team’s name has since been changed to the Pelicans — but Paul was a transformational force. He had lightning quick hands, an even quicker crossover dribble and a mean streak, and his maturity enabled him to strike up instant chemistry with older teammates such as David West and Tyson Chandler. He did everything: score, pass, defend and lead playoff teams.
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When Paul was drafted fourth in 2005, he was constantly measured against Deron Williams, a bigger and more physical point guard who was selected by the Utah Jazz with the third pick. By the time Paul was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers in 2011, he was the NBA’s top floor general and seemingly headed for comparisons to Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Oscar Robertson, Jason Kidd and Stockton as the best to play the position. At that point, a scrawny Curry was still getting his feet wet for Golden State.
Paul climbed the ranks to “Point God” status so quickly because of his mind. He was an expert at squeezing maximum offensive output out of limited centers with alley-oop passes and pick-and-roll savvy, and he set the tone for his teams with an uncompromising leadership style. Listed at 6-foot, Paul was the quintessential “little general,” shouting orders and pointing out coverages while pulling the strings at both ends. His command of the game was so complete that it sometimes felt as if the referees were under his spell; opponents chafed when he drew fouls by selling marginal contact from awkward big men or manufactured a delay-of-game whistle by alerting the officials to someone’s untucked jersey.
For years, Paul and LeBron James were regarded as the sport’s smartest players. The longtime friends also were instrumental figures in the player empowerment movement: Shortly after James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the star-studded Miami Heat in 2010, Paul departed New Orleans for Los Angeles, where he shepherded the “Lob City” era with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. In 2014, Paul knocked out Curry’s young Warriors in a hard-fought first-round series. In 2015, Paul hit the shot of his career, banking in a double-clutch runner in the final seconds to eliminate Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs in Game 7 of the first round.
Paul’s Clippers tenure eventually unraveled with a series of playoff disappointments, ill-timed injuries and personality clashes, but it also saw his influence on the sport peak as he helped guide the franchise through the ouster of disgraced owner Donald Sterling and became president of the National Basketball Players Association. Player salaries skyrocketed during his time as union head from 2013 to 2021, and Paul played a key role in negotiating the 2019-20 season restart that saw games played in a Disney World bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.
While Stockton had spent his entire career as a Jazz icon, Paul joined an itinerant generation of 21st century superstars such as James, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. Everywhere he went during his lengthy prime, he made an immediate positive impact.
The Hornets added 20 wins in his rookie season compared with the previous year. The Clippers improved from 32-50 in 2010-11 to 40-26 in his lockout-shortened first season in Los Angeles. When he joined the Rockets in 2017, they jumped 10 wins for a franchise-best 65-17 mark. After his partnership with Harden fizzled, Paul carried the unproven Oklahoma City Thunder to a 44-28 record and an unexpected playoff berth. He then joined the Phoenix Suns, boosting them from a 34-39 record in 2019-20 to a sparkling 51-21 record and a Finals appearance in 2020-21.
Midway through the 2021 Finals, Paul, then 36, was on the verge of his long-awaited glory. His dominant all-around play staked Phoenix to a 2-0 series lead over the Milwaukee Bucks, but his impact waned as the series reached its conclusion. Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, nearly a foot taller and almost a decade younger than Paul, emerged triumphant. In the years since that near miss, Paul has bounced from the Suns to the Warriors to the Spurs and back to the Clippers, but he hasn’t had another real title shot and is unlikely to get one this season.
As a lightly used member of the Clippers’ bench this season, Paul has largely slipped out of the national consciousness. Don’t overlook the fact that he outlasted Williams, his draft classmate, by nearly a decade, or that Griffin, his younger co-star, is a television commentator after retiring in 2023. Paul kept plugging along and embracing new roles, serving as Curry’s backup in Golden State and Victor Wembanyama’s guide in San Antonio.
Paul still isn’t finished, but he has played more seasons than Stockton, scored more points than Thomas, dished more assists than Johnson, nabbed more steals than Kidd and claimed as many all-star nods as Robertson, all while raking in more than $400 million in career earnings and ranking first in career win shares among point guards.
That’s still not enough to rival Curry, but it gives Paul a strong case to be regarded as a top-five point guard of all time. Just as Stockton has continued to reign atop the record books, Paul’s full body of work won’t be duplicated anytime soon.
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