If you were one of the people who ruled out Chris Paul a few years ago, Tuesday was another reminder of how terrible that shot was, as Paul, who is threatening a 50-40-90 season, was nominated for second and 11th consecutive All-Star team career place over his equally deserving teammate Devin Booker.
Whichever side of the Paul-Booker All-Star fence you’re on, let this be your last wake-up call if you’re not paying close attention to Phoenix Suns. On Tuesday, despite three losses in overtime, they are tied in the losing column with the Lakers and Clippers for the fourth best winning percentage in the league. They are one of two teams, along with Jazz, with a top eight attack and defense. And if the playoffs started today, Suns would have a path to the Western Conference finals that avoids both LA teams.
That, in simpler terms, is what Chris Paul does.
If you’re already a good team, it makes you better.
If you are a broken team, it fixes you.
Unlike Hornets and Clippers BC (before Chris), BC Suns was not necessarily a broken team. They had Devin Booker. They will forever regret not choosing Luka Doncic (or Jaren Jackson Jr. or Trae Young, by the way), but Deandre Ayton, despite the surprising numbers alongside the Booker-Paul combo, is a double 20- 10 potential if he could figure out how to get to the free-throw line, like, never. They cheated the 76ers by Mikal Bridges, and the initially defamed 2019 recruiting Cameron Johnson choice is looking brilliant.
Still, the Suns had 13 games under 0.500 before reaching 8-0 at Bubble, a race in strange circumstances that no one could assess. Now, six months later, they are it is. Booker is having an All-Star season, probably a better year than Paul, but the math of adding Paul to his team continues to add up. Take a look at the winning percentages of Paul’s five career teams in the season prior to his arrival and the season after.
You look at that New Orleans Hornets team, which is not even a franchise anymore, and it’s easy to forget that Paul was called up in 2005. He will be 36 in May this year, the same age as LeBron James, who has become the standard of longevity until so unthinkable of all. Paul is not LeBron. He played 250 fewer games in his career and 151 fewer games in the playoffs. But he is also six feet tall. LeBron is playing with a Hulk suit. That Paul, as a little guard who never shied away from physicality, is still playing at this level is almost a feat for LeBron.
Like LeBron, Paul, despite all the lazy narratives like “he can’t form a team during the postseason”, is a sure thing for franchises. LeBron is like immediate contention in the championship, yes, but Paul has never had the supporting talent that James has enjoyed since he went to Miami and became a rental champion. In the year that James had no co-superstars with the Lakers in 2018-19, he was doing everything he could to stay in the top four in the West, just as Paul is now doing with the Suns.
The Hornets team that called Paul won 18 games the year before he arrived. They won 38 the following year. The Clippers were a joke before Paul. In the first season, the Rockets added Paul, they were it is close to returning Kevin Durant-Stephen Curry Warriors to the conference finals before Paul tore his hamstring and missed Games 6 and 7. The second the Rockets switched Paul, they were worse. Last year’s Thunder was believed to be in full rebuild mode after swapping Paul George and Russel Westbrook, only for Paul to make them better than they were when they had these two guys.
And now here we have the Suns, who, despite all the greatness of Booker, have Paul’s engravings on them. Start with the rhythm. Paul always played methodically, a type of guy who prefers to control even an effective dose of chaos, precision rather than volume change, and in fact, the Suns went from ninth speed last season (101.7 possessions for 48 minutes) to nº 29 of this year, with an average of 97.4 possessions for 48 minutes.
This does not mean that they play slowly all the time. Paul pushes the ball aggressively, as always, but he is super selective in the shots he allows, and that selectivity passed to his new teammates. Suns do not seek good shots. They push for great shots. If a big photo arrives early, they will take it. The Suns leads the championship with 1.22 points for possession of the transition ball. But they also take and kick more than any team in the league in the last four seconds of the kick timer.
This ability to thrive both in the early attack and in the end is one of the stealth things that make Suns so dangerous. They already look good because Paul, who can still reach his midpoints at will, requires so much, patiently manipulating an attack that generates the third most “open” shots (24.3) per game, which the NBA defines as the closest defender being at least six feet away – but then, on the rare occasions when all that work hits the wall, the Suns also has one of the best snipers in the business at Booker to rescue his assets.
Entering Tuesday, Booker scored 66 points in the last four seconds of the kick timer, second only to LeBron, Fred VanVleet and Julius Randle, none of which came close to the 52 percent that Booker is shooting from the field or 60 percent that he’s shooting 3 in those situations. In all, Booker converted 51 of his 98 “accurate” kicks, defined as a defender within 2-4 feet, with an effective edge percentage of 58.7, which is only behind Kevin Durant’s 59.8 among all players who made at least 50 of these photos.
This is some kind of offensive combination and a luxury for Monty Williams to always have one of Booker or Paul on the court, especially when they are playing with what is a really solid bank unit in Phoenix. Last season, when Booker was out of court, the Suns operated on minus-5.8 points per 100 possessions, with the attack dropping 13 points per 100.
This year they are golden anyway: when Paul is on and Booker is off, the Suns are over-14.1 per 100; when Booker is on and Paul is off, they are over-13.6. So, why does Phoenix have just over-1.2 with Booker and Paul playing together? The answer is Ayton, who is not a 3-point spacer threat. Apart from Ayton, all other formations with Paul and Booker add up to -26.4 per 100 with surprising offensive and defensive ratings.
In short, the Suns are real. They have a wonderful balance between youth and experience. They are selectively fast and efficiently slow. They are long and defensively versatile. They create easy and difficult photos. Booker is probably the best player, but this is a Chris Paul team, which remains as good as ever.