Chris Paul is at a crossroads. Sixteen years into his remarkable NBA career, the Phoenix Suns' star guard is simultaneously the closest he has ever been to a title but also now one loss away from what could be considered his most bitter postseason disappointment.
By any measure, Paul is one of the best point guards to ever play the sport, and he's arguably the greatest passer of his era. But his passing has come up short at the most critical time. He's averaging 8.8 assists per game in the NBA Finals, barely lower than his average of 8.9 during the regular season, but his turnovers have skyrocketed from 2.2 to 3.6. In the two games in Milwaukee, Paul had nine turnovers against 16 assists. A large portion of that is due to the defense of Jrue Holiday and the Milwaukee Bucks.
Still, if Paul wants to force a Game 7 back home at Phoenix and give himself a chance to win his first career NBA championship, he'll need to perform like the player who has a well-deserved reputation as the grand master of the NBA chessboard. He's a player who has seen every defensive coverage and figured out how to beat them all. Paul is capable of using his dribble to snake through the scoring area and manipulate the arrangement of defenders before consistently making the right play for his team.
Throughout this season, Paul has conducted the Suns' offense with near-perfect precision, getting everyone involved on a nightly basis. He's the passer on the team's top four assister-scorer duos, and it doesn't matter if Paul is setting up a star or a role player; he gets them all buckets easily -- just not easily enough in a series the Suns trail 3-2, which has them facing elimination Tuesday night in Milwaukee (9 p.m. ET on ABC and the ESPN App).
When operating at his best, Paul can get Deandre Ayton easy shots in the paint (the former No. 1 overall pick shot a career-high 62.6% this season). Paul can get Devin Booker clean looks at jumpers (Booker shot 53.1% from between 10 and 16 feet this season). Paul can set up wide-open 3-pointers for Mikal Bridges and Jae Crowder, both of whom saw their 3-point shooting percentage increase significantly from a season ago.
That diversity of execution has earned Paul his "Point God" moniker; he can do it all, and he has been doing it for the better part of two full decades.
Between the regular season and the playoffs, Paul has logged a staggering 11,332 total assists to 137 different teammates. A quick review of the top of that list is more than a trip down memory lane. It's also a reminder of the many different ways Paul, when operating at peak efficiency, is capable of breaking down any defense, even one as stout and complex as the one Milwaukee has thrown at him for the past few games.
1. Blake Griffin: 1,318 assists
It should come as no surprise that Paul's most frequent assist target was the teammate who coined the term "Lob City" himself in 2011. More than 10% of Paul's career assists have gone to Griffin; among active players, only the Russell Westbrook-to-Kevin Durant combo has resulted in more assists than those created by Paul setting up Griffin. The two stars spent six years together with the LA Clippers, forming one of the most quintessential pick-and-roll pairings in an era obsessed with the play.
Between 2011 and 2017, Paul would dribble around Griffin screens, read defensive coverages and go get buckets. Though the duo shared in multiple playoff disappointments and eventually broke up when Paul was traded to Houston, many of Griffin's career highlights came on the business end of a Point God dime.
Four of Griffin's six All-Star appearances came when Paul was his teammate. His best season came in 2013-14, when he averaged 24.1 points per game while converting 52.8% of his shots en route to a third-place finish in MVP voting, behind only Durant and LeBron James. That season, the Paul-to-Griffin pick-and-roll was by far the most prolific in the league. They were the only duo to average 20 pick plays per game, and out of the 47 duos who ran at least 500 pick plays together that season, they ranked fourth in overall efficiency. Griffin scored 9.3 of his 24.1 points per game directly off of Paul's passes.
2. David West: 1,188 assists
Before Lob City, Paul's preferred assist target was West, one of the great pick-and-pop artisans of his era. Paul led the league in assists in both the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons, and West, who blended toughness and finesse as a power forward, was the biggest recipient in each of those campaigns.
Unlike Griffin, who turned a screen for Paul into a shot at the rim more often than not, West found equal success in finishing his screens by drifting toward the perimeter for the kinds of 20-foot jumpers that are increasingly rare in the modern NBA. At the time, however, they made West the perfect partner for Paul.
Paul's ability to adapt to where his screeners prefer their shots -- from the West pick-and-pop to the Griffin pick-and-roll to a modern game that favors 3-point shooters -- has been one of the hallmarks of his passing brilliance. He has remained one of the best playmakers in the league, despite the fact that those plays look a lot different now than they did when he was back in New Orleans.
3. JJ Redick: 701 assists
As college rivals in the ACC, Paul and Redick did not exactly adore each other. But a decade after they were facing off in big-time college basketball games, these two not only became teammates, they became one of the premier catch-and-shoot tandems at the exact time the league was falling in love with 3s.
No pairing linked up for more made 3s in 2014-15 or 2015-16. Redick sank exactly 200 3s in both of those seasons. Paul assisted on more than half of them.
Redick is one of the finest catch-and-shoot partners a modern-day shot creator could ask for, and the Point God took full advantage of Redick's unique ability to come off of a curl, catch a pass and reliably turn that catch into a deadeye jumper at breakneck speed. Redick might have lived on the outskirts of Lob City, but he still did damage out there in the suburbs.
4. DeAndre Jordan, 633 assists
Alley-oops used to be relatively scarce in pro basketball, but now they are commonplace. Just ask Paul, who was on the wrong end of a devastating lob play at the end of Game 5 of these Finals.
Perhaps no pair of teammates in league history helped normalize the lob as a tactical weapon as much as Paul and Jordan. From 2011-12 to 2016-17, CP3 assisted on 369 alley-oops (including playoffs), almost 100 more than any other player. Jordan was the finisher on 277 of those, helping him lead the NBA in field goal percentage for five consecutive seasons. There were two big reasons for that. First, almost all of Jordan's shots were dunks and layups. Second, he was playing with Paul, who picked apart defenses and perfected passes that set up Jordan at the rim.
Before landing in Clipperland, Paul regularly threw lobs to Tyson Chandler, who shot 62.3% from the field in his first two seasons as Paul's teammate in New Orleans. Jordan took being a lob threat to another level, literally. In his prime, Jordan was one of the most productive rim-running bigs in the world. Alongside Griffin and Redick, he helped ensure those Clippers teams had perfect basketball geometry.
It's not all that dissimilar to what the Suns have done this season, up until these past three games, which have put them on the brink of elimination. Ayton has proved to be a great lob target (just ask the Clippers), while Booker, Bridges and Crowder provide solid jump shooting on the edges. James Jones won the league's Executive of the Year trophy, largely because of his acquisition of Paul this past offseason, but Paul was just the last step to unlock the best version of the roster that Jones had already put in place.
If that roster can come together and perform at its peak over these next two games, the Suns will not only bring an NBA title to Phoenix for the first time, they will also cement Paul's status as one the greatest point guards of the modern era.
What Chris Paul's assist history tells us about his present challenge - ESPN Philippines
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