Chris Paul doesn't really care about winning a championship. Changing coaches will not change Deandre or Blake's game.
Absolutely, I agree that's what this mostly was. I think there may have been a brief period (Simmons said 36 hours) where, out of frustration, he started to seriously consider leaving. But for the most part, I think what happened was Paul analyzed his potential non-LA options, saw Houston with Dwight as the most intimidating "threat" to the Clippers, and knew he'd need to leverage that to make certain things happen. But in the aftermath, he'll smile and play the team unity card, acting like it was smooth sailing all along. Same way he acted like he had nothing to do with Del Negro's dismissal, even though the Clippers themselves insinuated that he did. He finds plausible deniability and wisely uses it to keep his actions under the radar. (Really, that's been the biggest difference between CP3 and Dwight the last two years... they've actually been in remarkably similar situations and used similar tactics. But CP3 has had a quieter "inner circle", and that combined with his insistence on plausible deniability kept the media off his case. It's funny, because in the end, Howard is the one that made the basketball decision while Paul went the money/Hollywood fame route.)
Why wouldn't he have wanted to play with Howard and Harden. I'll go out a limb here and say 90% of the NBA would like to play here now given the chance. I hope we keep Asik and Lin though.
