The Brilliance of Chris Paul

I know Chris, I missed you too.

Three years ago I was best described as a casual basketball fan. Then I watched Chris Paul perform in the 2008 NBA playoffs, and I wasn’t a casual fan anymore.

Chris Paul’s run during that postseason made me want to be a basketball fan, much the same way that reading The Great Gatsby made me want to understand literature on a deeper level, or how seeing Die Hard for the first time increased my love of Christmas tenfold. The barrage of crossovers, floaters and bounce passes that Paul let loose in those playoffs left me in awe, and I wanted more.

And then, tragically, Chris Paul just sort of disappeared. After missing almost half of last season with a knee injury, he returned to the court this year as a deeply lessened version of himself. He still managed to put up decent stats and get his team into the playoffs, but the knee was clearly holding him back. Watching him this season was like watching Die Hard 2, still fun, but nowhere near as good as the original.

As a basketball fan, this circumstance made me very sad, because when Chris Paul is playing well he is more fun to watch than any other player in the league.

I say this because there is something incredibly unique about Paul’s greatness; in that it is not derived from pure athletic force, but rather from subtlety and craft. When you look at guys like Dwight Howard and LeBron James you immediately know why they are two of the best players of the league, and while watching them do their thing is no doubt impressive, there also isn’t really much to it. They are simply bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else in the league, and they know how to take full advantage of their physical gifts.

Paul is different, though. He doesn’t make other players look silly by jumping over them, he does it by unleashing an ever so slight flick of the wrist or bob of the head. His movements are so subtle that sometimes you can’t even see them until the play is shown again in slow motion.

Take the play at the 2:01 minute mark of this highlight reel for example. Watching the play at full speed, it’s not exactly clear what Paul does to make Jason Kidd temporarily lose control of his limbs. If you look carefully, you can see him do something with his right hand, but it’s just a brief flicker, there and gone before you make sense of what just happened. Paul’s like a magician performing a card trick. You know you saw him do something with that damn card, and yet it’s still nowhere to be found when he opens his hand.

It’s not until the play is slowed down that the genius of Paul’s subtlety becomes apparent. You see him feign a crossover to his left as he slides his right hand underneath the ball, leaving it spinning in place like a yo-yo. You see him calmly re-collect the ball with his right hand as he explodes past a bewildered Kidd. You see him finish with a spectacular pass that is completely mundane when compared to the magic trick that started the play.

You feel bad for Jason Kidd.

It is plays like this that made me fall in love with Chris Paul, and subsequently the game of basketball. This is why it was so sad to see him playing as a shell of his former self, to be forced to acknowledge the possibility that Paul’s best days were already behind him.

And then Sunday night’s game against the Lakers happened.

There was Chris Paul, mercilessly exerting his will onto the Lakers defense, utterly in control of every facet of the game and finishing with 27 points, 13 rebounds and 15 assists.

Paul played brilliantly the entire night, and yet as the game was winding down I found myself still waiting for that one magic trick of a play, the one play I’d need to see over and over again in order to fully understand what had happened (this ridiculous crossover move on Bynum came awfully close).

It was on the game’s pivotal possession, with the Hornets up three and fourteen seconds left on the clock, that I got my wish.

Paul isolated against Kobe Bryant at the top of the key, drove left, and then did this (fast forward to the 4:00 minute mark of the video).

When I saw the game live, I had no idea how Jarrett Jack had ended up with the ball just inside the free throw line. I saw Paul go careening down the left side of the lane where he was enveloped by the limbs of Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant, and then the ball just seemed to appear in Jack’s hands, who proceeded to knock down the game clinching jumper.

Stranded in mid-air with nowhere to go, facing what would have at best been a brick off of the back board and at worst a blocked shot, Paul somehow managed to see Jack cutting towards the lane out of the absolute furthest corner of his eye; and with one quick flick of the wrist, he’d pulled off another card trick.

And it felt good to be dazzled once again.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 dot gmail dot com.