Another wild story involving the Los Angeles Clippers and Chris Paul has surfaced online. The Clippers shocked the NBA world by sending home Paul earlier this week before he could conclude his retirement season with his legacy franchise. One of the biggest reasons for this fallout came from Paul clashing with head coach Ty Lue.
Reports indicated that Lue and Paul went weeks without speaking to each other to show how badly their relationship fell apart. However, a video is circulating from the preseason footage involving Clippers’ star guard James Harden, Paul and Lue in practice.
Harden is shown talking to Paul about a play and informing Lue about it. The once seemingly humorous moment saw Lue cursing about Paul before making his opinion known. “F*** CP!” Lue said. “Ain’t no name knowing *****. Get the ball, play, and get to your action.”
The video comes off a lot less fun today since Lue and Paul’s fractured relationship caused them to have an ugly falling out. Lue saying “it just didn’t work out” showed he didn’t see a path towards Paul playing on this team again at the end of the relationship.
Hyland: Lue Wasn’t Disrespecting Chris Paul
Former Clippers player Bones Hyland saw the video circulating on social media and decided to give his two cents from his time with the franchise. Hyland claimed that Lue spoke like that in a joking context with everyone and it shouldn’t be indicative of a negative relationship at the time.
Paul was seemingly on good terms with Lue and the rest of the Clippers coaching staff during the start of the season. The legend had some wiggle room while playing poorly as the backup point guard before the team finally removed him from the rotation. Paul was expected to contribute more after a solid season last year with the San Antonio Spurs.
Hyland maintains that the footage of Lue cursing Paul’s name wasn’t anything serious. Paul eventually became an enemy of Lue enough to see the coaching staff endorse ruining a legend’s final season. General Manager Lawrence Frank implied that the move had to be made for the betterment of the franchise.
Chris Paul Is A Future Coach
One of the worst-kept secrets in the NBA is that Paul will likely become a head coach once he retires. Many polls involving players and executives will see Paul at the top of the list when asked to answer which current players will become successful coaches in the future.
The entire career of Paul has seen him thriving via being a leader in the locker room. Paul also always played with the team’s results in mind and wanted to win at all costs. Los Angeles likely disliked a strong personality that likes to use basketball intelligence second guessing them and inspiring other players to do the same.
Lue and assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy have been confirmed as two of the main names that Paul butted heads with at the end of his Clippers tenure. Paul having the basketball mind of a coach and expressing it caused a clash to end the dream retirement scenario in Los Angeles.
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