The injury took his hamstring. It couldn’t take his soul. CP isn’t just a player. He’s a coach. He challenges and inspires. We all saw him running a huddle in Game 5. I bet he does that in Game 6, and if necessary, Game 7.
[Iko] ‘It changes everything:’ What if Chris Paul never tore his hamstring in Game 5? The 2018 Western Conference Finals was everything it was hyped up to be—the pantheon of modern-day basketball, a scintillating two-week affair between two bitter rivals, a clashing of styles—and it was nothing all in the same breath. Because of the basketball world we live in today, a cutthroat league where lengthy careers are vindicated by rings or the inability to obtain one, there’s an insane amount of pressure from the moment an organization is considered a contender. For the Houston Rockets during the 2017-18 season, ‘contender’ wasn’t just a thought that existed within the walls of the Toyota Center. It was everything. There was only one thing that stood in the Rockets’ way of a championship as far as they were considered, Eastern Conference champions be damned—the big bad Warriors. It’s often said in NBA folklore that the regular season and the playoffs are two different beasts of their own. But within the playoffs, there are series that seem to be bigger than two teams, an outcome that means more than surface-level analysis suggests. This is why Game 7 was such a monumental moment in recent team history. Not only was it the stepping stone to a trip to the Finals, the first time back in nearly 25 years, but it was a rallying call for the city of Houston. It was light for those who had lived in literal darkness through the rainfall and storms of Hurricane Harvey. Redemption for head coach Mike D’Antoni who had seen his unfortunate share of dynasties in his day..a crowning moment for GM Daryl Morey of all the years of wheeling and dealing, finally finding something that stuck.. a breakthrough for James Harden and Chris Paul, two players who were different and the same. Harden’s legacy cemented, Paul finally getting over the hump. There was something for everyone, a reason for an entire organization to be all-in. “I mean it just would have been different across the board,” said Rafael Stone, Rockets VP of Basketball Operations. “You know, Mike D’Antoni gets his championship. Chris Paul gets one, James Harden gets one, Daryl gets one, I get one. So for all of us, that would have been career-defining.” The days and hours leading up to Game 7 were emotional, trying times for the franchise. Not only did they have to recalibrate after an epic Game 6 collapse in Oracle Arena, but the status of Chris Paul’s availability still hung in the air like a dark cloud. In the penultimate practice, Paul walked slowly down the ramp leading to the court to meet up with the rest of his teammates. Smile bright as ever, surrounded by P.J. Tucker and Irv Roland. Perhaps he was putting on a brave face. Maybe if he looked confident that his hamstring was good to go, it actually might be. I remember people constantly refreshing their phones as they waited anxiously on the results from the MRI to find the extent of the injury. If it was a Grade 1, would he be able to go? Paul would certainly be up for it, this wouldn’t be his first rodeo. He’d done it as a Clipper against Tim Duncan and the Spurs, literally dragging his foot along the floor as he nailed the dagger. Another time, he’d broken his hand against the Blazers. To be completely honest, given the stakes and the sheer possibility of suiting up, the only other comparable instance to that evening was the presidential race of 2008. By the time D’Antoni got up on the podium to speak, the joy had already been sapped from his face. He looked a broken man, one who was staring in the face of his own basketball mortality. “There was just no way,” D’Antoni said shaking his head. “Everybody came to the same conclusion. There was just no way.” Truthfully, he had known this was always going to be the outcome. The front office had discussed it at length following Game 5 and once it was clear he couldn’t go for Game 6, Game 7 wasn’t too far off. Paul physically couldn’t push off his right leg. “ I think we all knew that he wasn’t going to play,” Stone added. ” He was trying and everybody..it just wasn’t going to happen.” To understand just why that decision was met with heavy hearts, it goes further than just winning a game or even potentially winning the NBA Finals. Paul’s impact on the year had sent the Rockets eons farther than how their 2016-17 season had ended. Conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that summer for them was met with bitterness, anger, and above all confusion. For starters, what was up with Harden during Game 6? But it wasn’t that, actually the opposite. It was then that the organization realized he couldn’t shoulder the load on his own. From the season in totality, the organization firmly believed then that Harden was the best player in the league. But he wasn’t going to get to where he wanted to go on his own. No one that had won a championship in the last 15 years won it on their own. He needed help, the front office knew who could get him there, and it was attainable: the perfect storm. “Well, I mean, we wanted Chris Paul,” Stone said. “We knew he was going to be a free agent and it just made a ton of sense.” It was always going to be a gamble, but scared money don’t make no money. Eric Gordon had already been earmarked as someone who could be a serious compliment to a championship team, and Ryan Anderson was a bonafide outside threat. But in the minutes that Harden sat, the offense wasn’t run as smoothly. Lou Williams and Gordon did more or less the same thing, score. The Rockets needed a playmaker.
D’Antoni’s first season as head coach had promise—second-round flameouts aside. His conversion of Harden to point guard saw him lead the league in assists, and his offensive vision propelled Gordon to his first-ever Sixth Man of the Year award. It wouldn’t be enough. There isn’t a semantics trophy given out, no participation awards readily avaialable. Between Morey, Stone, and the rest of the front office, a player of Paul’s caliber was earmarked as what the franchise was missing to bridge the gap between pretenders and contenders. A move of that nature would gut the team’s depth, of course. Montrezl Harrell hadn’t necessarily gotten the opportunity his budding skills warranted, and Williams is as savvy a player as they come. Those departures would hurt. But there were avenues to recoup some of the pieces. ‘In Morey We Trust’ wasn’t just a catchy Twitter hashtag, this group was prepared to work the logistics. “We gave up Trez, Pat, and Lou, right,” Stone explained. “But we got Chris, P.J. [Tucker], and Luc [Mbah a Moute]. I think when you think about just Chris, but that’s not the reality, right? The reality is, you replaced three guys with three guys. We gave up really good players, and we got really good players.” The tradeoff was this—during the course of a 48-minute game, the Rockets would no longer have the playmaking problem that had plagued them since Harden arrived 5 years prior. Whether it was Paul or Harden, there would be a future Hall of Fame guard on the floor at all times. The question must have been on the minds of everyone inside Toyota Center that evening, something that became more apparent as the Rockets’ grasp of the night loosened by the dribble in the second half. What if Chris Paul never tore his hamstring? What if just landed safely in the waning moments of Game 5? It’s questions like these that penetrate basketball discussions all across the world, something that has been in every barbershop across America ever since May 24, 2018. “I think it changes everything, but it’s not like any one specific thing. Does that make sense?,” Stone said. “By the time you get to Game 7, you are who you are. They are who they were, you know. There wasn’t like any obvious adjustments that we thought they were going to make or that we were going to make. And it was just, you know, hopefully, hopefully we can play really well. And we did play really well actually. I thought we played really well in both games.” Realistically, the team felt like they had let a golden opportunity slip. The data the Rockets had available to them indicated that without a healthy Paul, there was a 50-50 chance of closing out the series in Oakland. A tall task to say the least. But had his hamstring been intact? According to Houston, that’s a different story. “I mean we would have been like 80 percent odds or 70,” Stone said “But very high. I don’t know what, I don’t know what it would have been. Maybe if you got a gambling guy, they could tell you. I think the biggest thing is that you got a chance to win a championship, right. And like that’s a once in a lifetime thing.” Personally, I think Game 6 would have been a loss either way. A team that talented just wasn’t going to lose in six games, no matter how many regular-season games the Rockets won that year. But what about a highest-of-stakes, winner-take-all, in front of 20,000 screaming, loving fans? Houston’s belief in a victory stems from the idea that Paul could carry the offense through the minutes that Harden rested. He had feasted against opposing second units for the entire year, so much to the point that the offensive rating with Paul-led benches rivaled the best of the league’s offenses. More importantly, a healthy Paul means another dog ready for a vicious fight. He had arguably been the best player on the floor for either team during the series, and that would matter a ton—or it would mean absolutely nothing. After all, Game 7s are weird. They’re unconventional. X’s and O’s tend to go out the window when it comes down to who wants it more, who’s willing to dive in the stands for a loose ball, make the extra pass, tighten up the defensive intensity and the loose ends of a game. That being said, missing 27 threes in a row is also unconventional. That never happens. Like ever. Paul revealed something during his final season in a Rockets jersey that gave some insight into how that nightmare sequence could have gone had he been handling the ball. It was a conversation with Iman Shumpert during a practice where the two had been engaged in friendly banter, Paul saying that no one could guard him. But following that exchange, Paul explained the difference with his tapestry and Houston’s identity. “When the game’s on the line, I’m not taking a 3,” Paul told Shumpert, who by now was in full student mode. Paul took the ball, moved to his favorite spot on the floor, and pulled up for a midrange look, a patented, unguardable shot in his eyes. Maybe after the first six or seven misses from deep, Paul would have reeled the team in to recalibrate them, remind them of how tangible the goal was. Maybe he took it upon himself to finish the job himself. Like he had done against the Jazz. Like he had done against the Spurs. Like he had done in Game 5. What if the Rockets defeat the Warriors in Game 7? Do they finish the job against LeBron James and the Cavs? Maybe D’Antoni gets a mega-extension, Trevor Ariza stays, Paul sticks around a bit longer. Perhaps there is a storybook ending for Clutch City. Chasing success takes a lot. Chasing immortality takes even more. My friends and I debate basketball from sunrise to sunset, and while some of it may be extreme hypotheticals, there was one particularly interesting take that my good friend Viri had: championships are circumstantial. “Not only do you have to be great,” Stone explained, “Not only do you have to try your hardest, you also have to get a little bit lucky. And in that instance, not only do we get, not get a little bit lucky, we got, we got unlucky, you know” “ It really, really sucks that we didn’t get it from my perspective. That’s the agony of defeat, right?”
