Chris Paul has been around this league so long that it’s easy to kind of forget how unbelievably good he is. His willingness to be a distributor, and his ignominious exit from the Houston Rockets, have pushed him to the edges of superstardom.
He remains a superstar, though. He reminded us of that again on Monday night, when he willed the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 104-100 Game 6 victory over his former team, the Houston Rockets.
We’re heading to a Game 7, and Chris Paul is a big reason why.
In Game 6, Paul finished with a team-leading 28 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and the team was a preposterous +20 with him on the floor.
But no points were more important than those that Paul scored in the closing minutes of the game. With the Rockets locked down and trying to finish off the series, Paul took over, scoring eight of his team’s 12 final points to earn the Thunder a 4-point win and force a Game 7.
While other point guards in this league may be pure better shooters, or have more speed than the 35-year-old Paul, I’m not sure there’s a guard I’d rather have with the ball in his hands in the final minutes of a game. (Dame Lillard as the possible exception.)
Nobody handles close games better than Paul, who led the NBA with 150 points in clutch situations, defined as the last five minutes of a game in which the point differential is five or fewer points.
Paul has built a career on being a pure point guard early in games — facilitating, getting teammates their points, then taking over games when it matters. He did it in New Orleans, he did it in LA, he sometimes did it in Houston (Harden had some issues with that), but in OKC he gets to play that way.
He facilitated early, and got Danilo Gallinari going (25 points), but then come crunch time, he did what he does. Two step-back jumpers, a three-pointer, and a charging drive that earned him two free-throws were what his team needed, and he got them. Now we’ve got a Game 7.
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