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If you were one of the people who canceled Chris Paul a few years ago, Tuesday was another reminder of the terrible shot of Paul, threatening a 50-40-90 season, was named second in a row and 11th. The career All-Star team over his equally deserving teammate Devin Booker.
Whichever side of the Paul-Booker All-Star fence you are standing on, let it be your last wake up call if you’re not really paying attention to the Phoenix Suns. Coming in on Tuesday, despite three overtime losses, they are tied in loss column with the Lakers and Clippers for the fourth best winning percentage in the league. They are one of two teams, along with the Jazz, with an attack and defense in the top eight. And if the playoffs were to start today, the Suns would have a path to the Western Conference final that bypasses the two Los Angeles teams.
This is, in the simplest terms, what Chris Paul does.
If you are already a good team, he makes you better.
If you’re a broken team, he fixes you.
Unlike the Hornets and BC Clippers (before Chris), the BC Suns weren’t necessarily a broken team. They had Devin Booker. They’ll forever regret not drafting Luka Doncic (or Jaren Jackson Jr. or Trae Young, for that matter), but Deandre Ayton, despite surprising numbers alongside the Booker-Paul combo, is a double-double with 20- 10 potential if he could figure out how to reach the free throw line like never before. They swindled the 76ers for Mikal Bridges, and Cameron Johnson’s initially maligned 2019 draft pick looks brilliant.
Still, the Suns had 13 games under .500 before going 8-0 in the bubble, a run under strange circumstances that no one quite knew how to assess. Now, six months later, they this. Booker has an All-Star season, probably a better year than Paul, but the calculation of adding Paul to your squad keeps piling up. Take a look at the winning percentages of Paul’s five career teams in the season before he arrived and the season after.
You look at this New Orleans Hornets team, which isn’t even a franchise anymore, and it’s easy to forget that Paul was drafted in 2005. He’ll be 36 in May, the same age as LeBron James, who became the standard of longevity until then unthinkable for everyone. Paul is not LeBron. He has played 250 fewer career games and 151 fewer playoff games. But he also measures 1.80 meters. LeBron is playing in a Hulk costume. That Paul, as a little guard who has never shied away from physicality, still plays at this level is almost a LeBron-like feat.
Like LeBron, Paul, despite all the lazy “he can’t have a team on the playoff bump” tales, is a sure thing for franchises. LeBron equates to an immediate championship contention, yes, but Paul never had the supporting talent James has had since he went to Miami and became that champion for hire. The year James didn’t have any co-superstars, with the Lakers in 2018-19 he was doing all he could to stay in the West’s top four, just like Paul is now doing with the Suns. .
This Hornets team that drafted Paul won 18 games the year before his arrival. They won 38 the following year. The Clippers were a joke before Paul. The first season, the Rockets added Paul that they were this about to bounce the Kevin Durant-Stephen Curry Warriors in the conference final before Paul tears his hamstrings and misses Games 6 and 7. The second the Rockets traded Paul, they were worse. Last year’s Thunder were thought to be in full rebuild mode after trading Paul George and Russell Westbrook, only for Paul to make them better than they were when they had those two guys.
And now we have the suns here, which to all of Booker’s greatness has Paul’s footprints all over it. Start with the tempo. Paul has always played methodically, a type of guy who prefers control, even an effective dose of chaos, precision on passing volume, and indeed the Suns went from ninth place last season (101.7 possessions for 48 minutes) at No. 29 this year, averaging 97.4 possessions per 48 minutes.
It doesn’t mean that they play slowly all the time. Paul pushes the ball aggressively, as he always has, but he’s super selective with the shots he allows, and that selectivity has rubbed off on his new teammates. The Suns don’t push for good shots. They push for awesome blows. If a good shot is there early, they take it. The Suns lead the league with 1.22 points per transition possession. But they also take and shoot more shots than any team in the league in the last four seconds of the shot clock.
This ability to thrive in both early and late attacking is one of the sneaky things that make the Suns so dangerous. They already have a ton of beauty as Paul, who can still reach his midrange spots at will, demands the same, patiently handling an attack that generates the third most “wide open” hit (24.3) per game, what the NBA defines as the closest defenseman standing at least six feet away – but on the rare occasions when all that work hits a wall, the Suns also have one of the best tough makers in the business to Booker to bail out their belongings.
Entering Tuesday, Booker scored 66 points in the last four seconds of the shot clock, behind only LeBron, Fred VanVleet and Julius Randle, neither of whom come close to the 52% Booker shoots from the field or the 60% he drawn. 3 in these situations. In total, Booker converted 51 of his 98 “tight” shots, defined as a defender standing 2-4 feet away, with an effective field goal percentage of 58.7, which trailed only Kevin Durant’s 59.8 among all players who took at least. 50 of those shots.
It’s kind of an offensive combination and a luxury for Monty Williams to always have one of Booker or Paul on the pitch, especially when playing with what’s a really solid bench unit in Phoenix. Last season, when Booker was off the field, the Suns ran minus -5.8 points per 100 possessions, with the offense dropping 13 points per 100.
This year they’re golden anyway: when Paul is on and Booker is off, the suns are over 14.1 percent; when Booker is on and Paul is off, they are plus-13.6. So why is Phoenix only over-1.2 with Booker and Paul playing together? The answer is Ayton, who is not a 3 point spacing threat on the ground. Take out Ayton, and every other lineup featuring Paul and Booker is a cumulative over 26.4 percent with stunning offensive and defensive ratings.
In short, the suns are for real. They have a wonderful balance between youth and experience. They are selectively fast and efficiently slow. They are long and versatile defensively. They create easy shots and make tough ones. Booker is probably the best player, but it’s a Chris Paul side, which remains as good as it always has been.
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