Chris Paul agrees to 1-year deal with Clippers for his 21st NBA season: Source

After weeks of speculation, the LA Clippers reached an agreement with point guard Chris Paul on a one-year veteran’s minimum contract, a team source said, returning the 20-year veteran to the franchise with which he starred from 2011 to 2017.

Paul’s previous arrival started a run of 14 consecutive winning seasons for the Clippers, the NBA’s longest current active streak. Now, he has returned to help the Clippers win a championship as part of that streak. Paul is a 12-time All-Star, an 11-time All-NBA selection, a nine-time All-Defense selection and a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary team. He will be a reserve to James Harden, his former Houston Rockets teammate.

This is expected to be Paul’s final NBA season after he told Jemele Hill last month that he intends to play “at the most a year.” After playing for five teams in eight seasons since leaving the Clippers in 2017, Paul expressed a desire to play his farewell season closer to home; his family stayed in Los Angeles while he has played in Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Golden State and San Antonio. Paul even attended a Clippers home playoff game at Intuit Dome in April.

On Saturday, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was asked directly if the team would sign Paul. Frank said the team was “strongly considering him.”

“What I’d say about Chris is he’s a great player,” Frank said Saturday. “He’s a great Clipper. He obviously possesses some of the qualities we just referenced.”

Those qualities for the Clippers included a quest to improve the backcourt’s playmaking and ballhandling capabilities. Paul turned 40 years old in May, but he also averaged 7.4 assists and only 1.6 turnovers while starting all 82 games with the San Antonio Spurs last season. LA finished 23rd in the NBA in turnover rate and assist-turnover ratio, while only the Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young had more total turnovers than Harden last season.

Paul can support Harden in a reserve role, an arrangement that all parties should welcome. Paul was with the Clippers in 2013-14 when current head coach Tyronn Lue was an assistant under then-head coach and team president Doc Rivers. Although Paul did not leave the Rockets and Harden on the best of terms in 2019, league sources said the two have no concerns about being teammates again. Harden’s lone MVP season came with Paul as his teammate in 2017-18, the season that Paul left the Clippers for the Houston Rockets via an offseason trade.

In 1,354 regular-season games, Paul is averaging 17.0 points, 9.2 assists, 4.4 rebounds and is shooting 47.0 percent from the field and 87.1 percent from the free-throw line.

Now, the Clippers have bolstered their reserve unit with Paul and 2021 NBA champion Brook Lopez, with new additions and possible starters Bradley Beal and John Collins.

As Frank said Saturday, with 11 credible rotation players on the roster, everyone will need to understand their roles to maximize the team’s performance. With Paul and Lopez in the twilight of their careers as reserves, along with the 36-year-old Nicolas Batum, the Clippers have enough depth to not overwork any players while having insurance for the 35-year-old Harden, 34-year-old Kawhi Leonard and 32-year-old Beal.

“We’ve learned from those lessons,” Frank said, calling back to the 2022-23 Clippers team that fell short of expectations on the way to a first-round playoff defeat. “And I think the conversations that we have with anyone who’s going to join the Clippers next, they understand it’s a reserve role, they understand, kind of going into camp, exactly what it looks like. So, there’s no preconceived misconceptions.

“Yet you also have a responsibility that James (Harden) did play 79 games, he played the fifth most minutes. I’ll knock on wood, but the reality is for any NBA team, the amount of times you have your top 10 all available is usually 21 to 25 times throughout the course of a year. So, you literally need everyone on your roster to be able to contribute.”

(Photo: David Gonzales / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)