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Chris Paul has led the NBA in assists four times in his Hall of Fame career. The Phoenix Suns are only about 10 percent of the way through their season, but him being on pace to do so again at age 36 is quite an eye-raising start.
Through the Suns’ first nine games, CP3 is averaging a league-leading 11.3 assists per game, nearly matching his 13.2 points per game.
Head coach Monty Williams believes that having more familiarity with the 0.5 offense is helping in that regard, but Paul being a masterful facilitator isn’t new either.
“You can try to wax about it for a while, he’s just really good,” Williams said. “The thing I say about Chris is his passes are always on time and on target, as Jeff Van Gundy used to say. He just understands how to make guys more efficient on offense. They’re running different defenses at him, and when they do that, guys have to be ready to make shots.”
Phoenix hasn’t gotten off to the hottest start shooting the ball, making just 34.2 percent of their 3s, which ranks 17th in the association. But despite his high number of assists, the crazy thing is, a large portion of Paul’s dimes aren’t particularly flashy; most of the time, he’s just making the smart play and moving the ball where it needs to go. When the Suns’ shots start falling, the assists will stack up at an even more impressive rate:
In the early going this season, Paul has frequently deferred to his teammates through the first three quarters in an effort to get everyone else comfortable. With new faces like Landry Shamet, JaVale McGee and Elfrid Payton in the mix, not to mention Devin Booker missing most of training camp and the preseason due to COVID-19, the continuity Phoenix thought would be an immediate advantage has only just started to materialize.
“Chris is trying to make everybody happy all the time,” Williams said a few weeks back, when the Suns were still 1-3. “I’m like, ‘What? Everybody is happy. Like, you have the ball.’ But it just speaks to his integrity, he has basketball integrity, he doesn’t want to go out there and just jack up shots. But I’m like, ‘You gotta play.'”
And ever since then, play he has. Up until Monday’s game, Paul — who leads all NBA starters in assist-to-turnover ratio (4.64) — has focused primarily on getting everyone on the same page. It came at a cost in the short-term, but it’s starting to pay dividends, as the Suns have won their last five straight games.
In a win against the New Orleans Pelicans, Paul passed Mark Jackson and Steve Nash for third place on the NBA’s all-time assists list, racking up 12 assists but only 2 points through the first three quarters. In the fourth, when Phoenix needed a few daggers, CP3 supplied them, putting up 12 points and 6 assists in the final period.
“He’s just taking what the defense gives him,” Devin Booker explained. “He’s dissecting out there and just being a floor general. They were blitzing him a lot, and he made a lot of plays for other people. And the times they weren’t in there, he made ’em pay. He got to his sweet spots and knocked ’em down. But we’ve seen this over and over and over for years, of him just dissecting defenses, and you can’t keep it consistent or keep doing the same thing to him, ’cause he’s gonna figure it out quickly.”
That formula has been the blueprint for Chris Paul all season to this point: Facilitating early, reading the defenses’ blitzes, and making them pay in the fourth, taking matters into his own hands with his shot-making.
According to Williams, the team’s recent turnaround came when they stopped thinking so much and just started putting the ball in Paul’s hands to let him run more pick-and-rolls. While some have lamented his supposed lack of aggression early in games, in Williams’ eyes, Paul’s approach stays the same. It’s his recognization of what defenses are throwing at him that adjusts accordingly.
“I think for him, nothing changes,” Williams said. “I don’t think players run from the ball, but Chris is the guy that runs to the ball. And that’s his mentality, he wants to make those plays, he puts the work in and our guys believe in him. He’s a bit of a safety blanket for a lot of us because of his ability to score and find guys and just make plays. So he certainly makes us look a lot better than we deserve.”
His mentality may stay the same, but it’s certainly led to some low-scoring first halves, or even first three quarters. Before Monday’s win against the Sacramento Kings, Paul had scored a grand total of 4 first-quarter points through eight games. His 9-point first quarter in Sactown bumped those numbers a bit, but his scoring and shot attempts by quarter still paint the picture of a guy who sets up teammates first before getting more aggressive as the game wears on:
- 1st quarter: 1.4 points (13 points total), 1.8 field goal attempts
- 2nd quarter: 3.2 (29 points total), 2.1 field goal attempts
- 3rd quarter: 3.6 (32 points total), 2.7 field goal attempts
- 4th quarter: 5.0 (45 points total), 3.0 field goal attempts
“He just knows when to [take over], and it’s a skill,” Williams said. “He just figures out like, ‘This is this way, this guy is playing me this way, they’re blitzing, they’re dropping,’ and then he just goes into a period in the game where it’s just him. He can be passing, or he can just go into his midrange game and take over a little bit. But the intention is to always win. It could be three shots, and you’re just like, ‘That changed the game. He just knew when to do it.’ And that’s special.”
In the Suns’ win over the Atlanta Hawks, Paul had 6 points and 8 assists through the first three quarters. With Phoenix trailing by 12 entering the final frame, Paul notched 10 points and 5 assists in the fourth-quarter comeback.
“It’s just huge to be able to sit down and watch how he attacks the game,” Cam Payne said. “The way I attack the game is totally different how he attack the game. I feel like I gotta come in and get it in as quick as I can. C got time. So I feel like he he picks and chooses his opportunities.
“Ten assists in the first half, you gotta get out there and trap. Now it’s time for CP to go hoop. ‘Cause he might have two [points] leading all the way up to the fourth, but he end with 16 or something like that. He allows the defense to open up, and that’s just huge. That’s big. That’s unselfish as a player to not force it but also get yours at the same time. That’s why he is who he is. He finding everyone, and it opens up the game for him.”
Williams says the threat of Paul’s elite midrange game is what sets the table for everything else in his repertoire. While the rest of the league is zigging by focusing solely on 3-point looks and shots at the rim, the Suns are zagging, valuing the midrange mastery of CP3 and Devin Booker that allows them to set their defense.
“I think the efficiency of his midrange game is the thing that sets everything up,” he said. “When you have the ball in your hands and you’re playing in pick-and-roll, rarely are you gonna get a 3. When bigs are in drop or in coverage, it’s hard for you to get to the basket. So his ability to knock down that, 12-15 footer, I think it gives balance to the rest of his game — the passing, the lobs, the ability to get to the free-throw line, but then you add that midrange, I think that’s the safety blanket for him and us, to be able to get a bucket.”
Shooting a tidy 47.7 percent from the field, 40.9 percent from beyond the arc and 82.4 percent from the foul line, Paul’s offense remains as potent as ever…when he chooses to unleash it. He’s holding his own defensively too, averaging 2.3 steals per game, tied for third in the NBA.
Despite Deandre Ayton’s absence for three of the last four games, Paul’s mastery of the pocket pass in pick-and-rolls has helped the Suns keep on chugging. JaVale McGee and Frank Kaminsky bring very different skill-sets to the table, but their abilities as roll men — a lob threat in McGee, a secondary playmaker in Kaminsky — has helped Phoenix’s offense carry on without one of the game’s best pick-and-roll divers.
And, of course, sometimes Paul just makes incredible reads, even in his 17th season:
In Phoenix’s second game of the season, a win over the Los Angeles Lakers, Paul became the first player in NBA history to reach 20,000 points and 10,000 assists, and of course he hit the points threshold second among the two.
Watching Chris Paul hit all these historic marks while still aging like fine wine at age 36 has become a recurring theme for the Suns ever since he came to town, but they certainly aren’t surprised by it either.
“We don’t take it for granted, but I’ve watched him work,” Williams said. “I’ve watched him sacrifice. I’ve watched him change his diet. I see the lifting and all the people that he has in his program that work on his body. He wants to win. He wants to do all this stuff. So to see him pass these people on the list — assists, points, steals, all of that — I’m just happy to be along for the ride, man. It’s pretty cool to watch greatness.”
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