In especially big games, when the best players are expected to take over, they sometimes almost look like they just either have it or they don’t.
On Saturday, by the end of the Los Angeles Clippers’ make-or-break, back-and-forth pressure cooker of a Game 7 against the San Antonio Spurs, Chris Paul did not have the look of someone who had it.
That, it turned out, didn’t matter.
In the first quarter Paul tweaked his hamstring. He went to the bench, head in hands, then to the locker room to be checked out. In any normal game, he almost certainly would have stayed out.
But this was Game 7, and he returned, hobbling up and down the floor like a short Willis Reed.
He had a hand in each of the Clippers’ final four possessions. The first two, he was completely ineffective.
The final two, he was game-saving.
With about 1:45 left he took a handoff from Blake Griffin at the top of the three-point line for a pick-and-roll, but could neither quickly get by his defender, Danny Green, nor represent enough of a threat to draw Tim Duncan out of the middle of the key.
He passed back to Griffin on the roll, who jumped into a wall of Duncan and got blocked by Green.
With about 1:20 left, he dribbled past Green on another pick on the left side of the court this time, and Duncan once again didn’t bother to stray toward him, leaving open a massive gap to the rim and daring Paul to charge into it.
Paul, one of the game’s best at exploding to the hoop, deferred, passing to Griffin, who wasn’t in much of a position to try anything himself and moved the possession to Jamal Crawford.
It was crunch time, and the speedy, slithery Paul who has been his generation’s best and most fearless playmaker was a shell of himself.
Yet he found a way.
With 15 seconds left and the game tied, Paul dribbled to the elbow and, probably knowing he could neither juke nor jive nor stutter nor probe his way into the key, pulled up for a 15-foot jumper and drew a foul. Sank both free throws.
Once again, with the game tied, and eight seconds remaining, Paul took the ball at the three point line, dribbled down to the right block, Green on his tail, and about eight feet from the rim just inside the key on the right side, barreled his shoulder into Green for just enough space to float it up and off the backboard for the win.
This was a moment of determined greatness from one of the greatest of his time. An emphatic act in defiance of all of those who (like this writer) said the Spurs had a better team, the Clippers too thin.
And a great, giant exclamatory rebuff to the unfair criticism that’s always been lobbed his way about being a play-offs failure.
Paul, yes, has been to the play-offs six previous times in his career, each of those trips ending no later than the second round.
Before this season, Chris Paul’s teams were 22-31 in the post-season.
They were also, it should be noted, only eliminated as the higher seed in those play-off runs twice: in 2013, as the No 4 against the No 5 Memphis Grizzlies, and all the way back in 2008, when his second-seeded New Orleans Hornets were beaten in seven games in the second round by none other than the third-seeded San Antonio Spurs.
It took eight years, but Paul exacted his revenge.
The great myth about Paul, 29, is that he’s been a somehow lesser light in the post-season in his career. That his star has dimmed when the stakes were highest.
In fact he’s pretty much been the exact same player he always is, which should be of little surprise. By advanced measures, he’s virtually indistinguishable. His career PER is 25.6, his play-off PER before this season was 25.0. True shooting percentage: .578 career, .575 in the play-offs. Assist percentage: 46.6 career, 46.0 in the play-offs.
And so on.
By traditional figures, he has shot 47.4 per cent in his career (47.8 play-offs before 2015), 36.4 per cent from three (38.0), dished 9.9 assists per game (9.7), registered 2.3 steals per game (2.4) and scored 18.7 points per contest (20.6).
So why has Paul been considered by some a play-off failure?
Because basketball is a team game on which individuals are very often judged by team success, and Paul’s teams have mostly either played to their talent level or been a little unlucky. Last year against the Oklahoma City Thunder, for instance, the Clips lost in six games, dropping two of the final three that were in total decided by nine points.
In 2008 his Hornets were dead-even with the Spurs in point differential. In 2015 his Clippers were outscored by three points.
Each series was so close, statistically speaking, that you might as well have tossed a coin to determine the winner.
Or, on Saturday, tossed an awkward short-range floater.
“We’ve been in that situation a lot of times already this year and most of the time I hadn’t made it,” Paul said after the win.
“Finally it worked when we needed it.”
One gets the feeling that, deep down, Paul wasn’t merely referring to just this season when he said that.
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