In 2003, Curry just finished his first season at Charlotte Christian School, but at that time, the most eye-catching basketball star in North Carolina was not the second generation of Dale Curry’s stars, but Paul, who was selected as the best team in McDonald’s America.
Over the past 20 years, 35-year-old Curry and 38-year-old Paul became teammates after a long grudge, but their cooperation did not bring much joy or relief, the silence left may be even more so-the first reaction of the Shuhua brothers after the transaction was “very strange”, as Curry himself said, even half a year ago, he didn’t dare to think of such a combination, but it was so far that everyone had to look forward.
Thinking that Paul might have to replace himself next, Curry thought it was natural to be magical. Once upon a time, Paul had always been the existence that made him look up–
When he first went to college, Paul won the best rookie. When he showed up in crazy March, he was also invited to participate in the summer training camp held by LeBlanc James, paul, who is already an MVP candidate, served as a guest of Zhan Huang MEET U and became a tie with Curry. Before Curry took part in the draft in 2009, he specially asked Paul to train and listen to Paul’s teachings. In order to deepen the relationship, Curry also took his girlfriend Ayesha and Paul to Disney World for vacation.
However, this kind of benign interaction between teachers and friends did not last long.
Curry before entering NBA received guidance from LeBlanc and Paul
In 2011, when Paul played the peak data of 22+11 in the playoffs, and the Hornets stopped the first round again, the management failed to get Paul’s promise to renew the contract.
What was the NBA environment at that time? Just one year before that, the decision of LeBlanc changed the territory of the league. Anthony, who was very close to LeBlanc, also forced the palace to dig gold. The traditional concept of player loyalty was being overturned, in the face of the rich men who freely threw checks to rob people, the team in the small ball market was in danger. After the 2010-11 season, the labor negotiations in NBA were progressing hard and the shutdown was inevitable.
The situation of Wasps is more complicated. Before the 2010-11 season began, the scandal-ridden boss George Xin was unable to bear the team’s expenses due to financial problems. However, the wasp could not find a suitable buyer to take over, and finally only NBA “recycled” himself to take over. In the face of such turmoil at the top, there were rumors that Paul was unwilling to stay in the team to renew the contract. By the end of the season, Hornets general manager Del Demps decided to take the lead and put Paul on the shelves because he was worried that Paul would leave as a free agent in 2012, get enough reconstruction chips when he has the highest trading value.
As soon as the news came out, the wasp’s top-level phone was immediately hit by the team who came to ask for the price, and the Warriors were also one of them. Although Larry Riley, the then general manager, refused to admit it afterwards, Paul himself confirmed that the warrior had tried to introduce him with chips of Curry and Thompson, but he himself refused the proposal, because he doesn’t like California, which is completely different from “East Coast people” in culture and value.
However, he should not have expected that the final transaction seemed to bring his career development into another timeline to some extent-it cannot be said that he was completely derailed, however, after that, all the plots were no longer under his control. The goodness planted could not get good results, thus leaving too many unclosed rings and too many recoverable regrets, finally, it is hard to return.
However, the mirror between Paul and Curry seemed to touch each other by reaching out, and gradually became an insurmountable heaven.
In Paul’s 18-year career, he was traded five times in total. Including the current Warriors, he played for only three seasons on average in a team. Since being sent to the Rockets in 2017, it can even be said that Paul has been difficult to establish a foothold in a team. It sounds a bit incredible to him, a superstar. What was waiting for him in The Warrior was more unknown. The famous story Spears broke The news that he would start, but The tip of several old reporters in The Bay Area of The Athletic was that he might play a substitute.
Curry said in an interview that he was “very sorry” for Poole’s departure, but TA’s disclosure was clear: Curry was probably one of the leaders of Poole’s transaction. What the Warriors mainly consider is not how much contribution Paul can bring to the Championship, but how to deal with the problems left by the dressing room and save a lot of expenses for the future.
Of course, a healthy Paul can also bring what the 24-year-old Poole lacks at the tactical level: experience and stability. In the culture of the Warriors team, igodala and Livingston are indispensable. Cole hopes that Paul can fill the vacancy in this field.
But Paul is a expired contract after all. The only thing that can be sure is that he will not have the current value one year later. As for whether he can continue to stay as a warrior, it depends entirely on his health, contribution and the degree of integration into the team’s cultural recognition next season. Judging from Paul’s experience over the past years, this is a great uncertainty.
At the end of 2011, Paul was sent to the Clippers to start the era of “The city of empty connections”. After six playoffs, his Clippers career became a lesson that “the heart is higher than the sky and the life is thinner than paper. Paul’s leadership style at that time made his teammates and opponents equally disgusted.
He was impatient, picky and critical. Many leaders set an example, but Paul was absolutely “the first in his mouth” (Antonio Daniels, a teammate during the wasp period). Some teammates can accept it, but many cannot. Barnes also lamented that Paul did not have bad intentions, but the way he scolded his teammates was indeed problematic.
“Even if the veteran doesn’t buy it, Chris will roll his eyes when talking about Blake (Griffin) or DeAndre (Jordan). And I will help Paul explain his original intention clearly. I am would like to be a teammate with Chris, but it really needs strong tolerance, “Barnes said.
When the team went smoothly, the locker room conflicts caused by Paul’s mouth gun could be covered by winning, but when teammates doubted more and more about whether Paul’s leadership could bring the champion, the so-called “tough love” is not bought by anyone, which is the theme that Paul has repeatedly echoed in his career.
Curry said he had confidence in Paul because “CP can make every team he goes to better”. This law can be applied to thunder and the sun, but it may no longer be applicable to the present warriors.
2014 is a very critical time for Paul and curry. Paul, 28, entered the peak of his career and led the clippers to attack the league first. The opponent they met in the first round was the warrior who was in the prelude of the dynasty.
Since then, Paul was no longer Curry’s “mentor”, and the two began to regard each other as their biggest opponent.
G3 Paul’s successful defense at the last moment has always been interpreted as foul by warriors, allowing Curry to break the defense.
This is the beginning of the end of the “empty city”. On the other side, Curry led the Warriors to seize the right. The battle between him and Paul became the focus of the alliance, but the drama that everyone liked to see was always the front wave being shot dead on the beach. The media in the Bay Area (basically the team in the current TA Bay Area) released the narration that Curry wanted to compete for the strongest name in active service. Paul was naturally one of the “stepping stones”, and even chasing dreams was fanning the flames:
“For Curry, this duel is a personal grudge. It is natural for him to prove that he is better than Paul. CP is certainly doing everything possible to stop it, but it is useless. Jordan used to be bullied by the bad children legion, but when Jordan became stronger, it was useless to do anything.”
The Bay Area Reporter also speculated that Paul was jealous of Curry: “(Curry) once respected Chris Paul very much. Paul always had the upper hand in the duel between them. It was supposed that Paul won the championship first, but unexpectedly, Stephen came to the throne like this. Their relationship has changed at once, and (Paul) has a lot of complaints about Stephen at once.”
After the disintegration of the Clippers, Paul joined the Rockets and released the heroic words of “there is only one opponent in the eyes of Warriors. In the 2017-18 season, the Rockets won at least one warrior in the regular season. When they both entered the Western finals, the situation was clear. Whoever can bring down the other side would be the championship. However, the rocket exploded in place-“meltdown” was no longer enough to describe their crash and disappointment in the G7-Paul was absent due to injury in the last two games of the series, leaving the final highlight, it was the provocation after winning the Tianwang mountain war.
Since then, the Warriors swept the Cavaliers to win the championship in the finals, and the Rockets became more angry, thinking that this champion should belong to themselves, and this unconvinced spirit also made the Warriors more dissatisfied. In order to win, the two teams used unconventional means both inside and outside the game. They constantly complained that the pressure on the referee had made many passers-by disgusted. It was even more eye-catching to collect the black history of the other side and report the claim to the league.
The Rockets made it clear that the 2018 champion should be their own, saying that the referee’s bias towards the Warriors cost them tens of millions of dollars.
In the 2018-19 season, the Rockets have lost their hearts and there are many internal contradictions. Even without Durant, the Warriors still eliminated them in six semi-finals. Before the start of G6, Paul’s outrageous job came out again, saying that he let the Rockets home staff forbid Curry to enter the training, which could be described as losing and losing.
After the promotion, the Warriors played a provocative celebration, shouting the slogan “F** k Chris Paul “in the dressing room, and others heard Curry saying,” Brother, you have the guts to drive me off again.”
So far, there is no Paul in Curry’s comparison.
They didn’t take the initiative to iron out these grievances. In 2020, when Paul was asked about “the composition of the perfect Guard”, Paul said that there should be Ross’s explosive power, Owen’s ending ability, Nash’s external projection, and Wei Shao’s rebounding ability, leBlanc’s field of vision and his basketball IQ. In addition, it is better to add the body shape of Dron and Barron and Arenas’s ability to score difficult goals.
It was as if he had no idea who Curry was.
Then it was the regular season last season. Curry gave Paul his last heart and told him that “this is no longer 2014”. (Paul responded to this: “Who can tell me what happened in 2014?”) But Curry’s words had not been aggressive and malicious. After all, Paul had long been out of his sight.
Paul and Curry Warriors had no deep hatred, and they were not the reason why his career was in trouble. In the last season of the rockets, Paul played only 58 regular season matches, and his four-year contract of 0.16 billion has just begun. After being eliminated in the semi-finals, the Rockets immediately spread the news of infighting. The relationship between Paul and Harden was obviously worse than that between Paul and curry.
Harden and the Rockets actually saw the limit of Paul’s “lifting” team, and then quickly lost patience. Moreover, if Harden was asked about his attitude, he would obviously feel that he had undertaken much more than Paul, which was also the root cause of their contradiction.
Rocket Media said that leaving the rocket to Thunder was a deal required by Paul. But Paul’s statement was different. He told ESPN that he didn’t want to rebuild the Thunder, but the rockets that were anxious to change Wei Shao didn’t respect his wishes. (Paul went to the sun with better prospects immediately after his short stay in thunder, which seemed to support his statement.)
Paul was unwilling and unconvinced. Long after leaving Hugh city, he fell to the Stone of the rotten rocket, saying that letting him go was the loss of the rocket. He also stressed how he moved his family to Hugh city at the beginning, “private nannies, trainers, masseurs and chefs all moved with him”, but obviously this kind of complaint with Versailles could not get too much empathy.
However, his experience in the sun seemed to be the combination of Clippers and Rockets-during his honeymoon, he was described as a key leader in reshaping the culture of the sun; He also quickly lost the trust of his teammates when he failed in the Championship.
At the beginning, Monti Williams stressed that he and Paul should join hands again “no longer argue right or wrong, but pursue efficiency together”, but human nature is difficult to change, paul is still sticking to his leadership, that is, constantly picking mistakes.
At the beginning, Elton said rather miserably, “I really hope Paul would scold me more”, but when young people signed the big contract of expansion, Paul’s injury came again, and the team encountered setbacks, the teammates would not give Paul such tolerance again. By the time the sun was eliminated this year, Paul could not play. Elton ignored it publicly-actually it was more like revenge-Paul’s actions were shocking.
It was obviously not Paul’s plan to leave the sun. He was still communicating with general manager Jones the day before the transaction. While the transaction was going on, he was still on the plane, preparing to go to New York for the new book Roadshow. After getting off the plane, his 14-year-old son sent a message to tell him about it. He said he was “very shocked”. In an interview in New York, Paul repeated repeatedly that it was boss Ishbia and his smiling assassin Thomas who “wanted to go in another direction”. (Ishbia once firmly denied that Thomas was involved in the operation of the Sun.)
Paul’s last desire to die in a team should have been in his rocket years. His family and servants did not follow him to Russia and Phoenix any more. Now it is more convenient to play in San Francisco. It’s just that he won’t mention the topic of ending up. The fate of people is not fixed, but in the fleeting career of players, Paul gradually saw the ending point in front of countless lessons.
Now, the most important transaction in Paul’s career should actually be the unfinished transaction–
At the end of 2011, the Hornets negotiated not the Clippers but the Lakers. The content of the three-party deal was that Hornets got Odom, Martin, Scola and Goran Dragic as reconstruction chips. The Lakers got Paul and the Rockets got Gasol.
But in order to quell the anger of the boss of the small ball market for the two consecutive championships of the Lakers and the LeBlanc group, Stern stopped and rejected the deal in order to end the shutdown as soon as possible. This turning point seems to be the beginning of Paul’s entry into the wrong parallel universe, bringing us all into another branch line.
In this regional plot, his team overturned again and again at the critical moment of the playoffs. The Lakers also disintegrated the championship squad because they failed to get him. Odom, who was placed on the shelves, was hit, nervous Breakdown finally almost lost his life.
Paul had already talked to Kobe at that time and shared their excitement. Who else can adapt, understand and appreciate his picky turtle hair better than Kirby? However, they missed and the Lakers made a wrong reorganization, which led to the early end of Kobe’s Achilles tendon tearing peak and announced his retirement in just three years. Even if he retired one year later, the later tragic accident might not happen.
Perhaps it may be exaggerated and serious to describe all this by “going astray”. After all, it is the current reality. But the possible “main line” that everyone missed may be the biggest suspense left by Paul’s career.
Fortunately, basketball is not the whole life after all. Although Paul has not considered retirement, he already has a life plan after retirement, which is “being a team boss”. After all, he was the leader of the trade union. Whether on or off the court, it must never be easy for him to admit defeat and bow his head.
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(Text/kewell)
