Chris Paul was cordial. He was well-spoken, as always. He talked about the strengths of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. He mentioned working out with Curry — “not a lot of misses” — and previously spoke about the fact the two-time MVP and his wife were at his wedding. He and the Warriors’ assistant coach Hilton Armstrong played together and have a strong connection.
Yet something was undoubtedly missing from Chris Paul’s introductory press conference with the Golden State Warriors. Namely: anyone from the Warriors. It was Chris Paul, sitting in front of a mural about UNLV basketball, wearing a denim shirt. He held up a “No. 3” Warriors jersey, and it was a wrinkled mess. The main photo passed around had a trash can in the background.
Paul may have used the word “excited” a few times, but it was with a neutral tone. When a reporter assumed he was coming off the bench, he shot back “you coaching?” and then gave a half-hearted effort at smiling to show he was joking. The next reporter asked if he would be willing to come off the bench, and he said that he and head coach Steve Kerr would discuss that in Training Camp.
Something was missing from Chris Paul’s introductory press conference
Nothing egregious happened during the press conference, and Paul didn’t say “I don’t want to be here” or “I don’t feel welcome.” It does feel like the Warriors’ stars have reached out to Paul and welcomed him. Yet everything felt off. This didn’t seem to be a team excited to be adding a Hall of Fame point guard; it felt like some sort of perfunctory step in a transaction. The Warriors’ media team did yeoman’s work finding the one second Paul smiled to use as the preview of the below video:
Perhaps Paul is simply past the pomp and circumstance at this point in his career and asked the Warriors not to make a big deal about it. Perhaps the front office is fully committed to integrating Paul and finding one or two more bench players to help maximize his impact on the team.
What the press conference seemed to say, however, bubbling underneath the muted awkwardness, was that this is not a marriage built to last.
Chris Paul and his $30.8 million contract allowed the Warriors to move on from Jordan Poole, and his fully non-guaranteed salary for next season makes him a large expiring contract that the Warriors could use for their next trade. They could use him in a deal to pursue Damian Lillard, or Paul George, or Pascal Siakam. The Warriors have all but one of their future picks to attach to Paul to go and make another move.
That doesn’t mean they will, of course. That star they want may not be available, or available at a price they are willing to pay. But what seems to be the unspoken reality here is that the Warriors are very open to moving Paul in a trade, in a way they most certainly are not with Steph, Klay and Draymond, and to a lesser extent Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney. Those are all the core pieces of this team; Paul is something else.
Do the Warriors end up trading Chris Paul?
It’s more likely than not that Paul does get to training camp, meaning the Warriors we’ll need to have the “bench” conversation with him. The 12-time All-Star will probably be wearing that No. 3 jersey, likely ironed by then, on Opening Night. There’s also a very real chance that he gets to the playoffs with this team, and no one would consider it insane to see him in the NBA Finals making a positive contribution to the Warriors’ chances.
It’s also far from insane to see Chris Paul sent out in a deal for a younger wing under contract for multiple seasons, flipped for a big man to juice their frontcourt scoring, or swapped for a two-way player at any position with less of an injury history than he does. Perhaps Paul’s contract is used to bring in two players at lesser contract values to further bolster the rotation.
Again, just because the Warriors could trade Paul doesn’t mean they will. But what has been communicated thus far, from Paul’s noncommittal shrugs about joining a new contender to the lack of literally anyone noteworthy from the organization at his press conference, is that this is a marriage of happenstance, not of love.
This isn’t the Phoenix Suns targeting Paul as the perfect fit to help their team take the next step. This was the Warriors seizing an opportunity to get out of the Jordan Poole contract before it was too late, and it just so happened to mean adding a future Hall of Famer.
Time will tell what ultimately happens, and there are certainly members of the Warriors organization who hope that Paul gets a chance to see the court alongside this championship core. Yet there are others who expect that before that happens, Paul will appear in another press conference holding up another team’s wrinkled jersey.