The Phoenix Suns raced to the NBA's best record this season (64-18), so a first round matchup with the only sub-.500 team in the 2022 playoffs did not look challenging on paper--but the feisty 36-46 New Orleans Pelicans dominated the Suns 118-103 in game four to tie the series at 2-2. The Suns played very well in their 110-99 game one win, but they have not looked the same since Devin Booker suffered a hamstring injury in the second half of game two after scoring 31 points in the first half of game two. Booker has not returned to action since leaving game two, and he is expected to be out for at least two more weeks. The Pelicans won game two, and the Suns barely survived game three, escaping with a 114-111 win after Chris Paul scored 19 fourth quarter points to save the day.
Paul's late heroics in game three revived the talk about Paul being the NBA's best leader and best clutch player, but anyone who has followed his career with an objective and attentive eye understands that those narratives distort the truth. The concept of leadership is meaningless unless it is connected to accomplishing a goal. The primary goal for an NBA team is--or should be--winning a championship. Therefore, by definition, the best leaders in the NBA are the players and coaches who have helped their teams accomplish that goal. Paul entered the NBA in 2005, and since that time he has played for many talent-laden teams but he has reached the NBA Finals just once. His teams missed the playoffs three times, and they lost in the first round on six other occasions; that adds up to Paul not making it past the first round for nearly a decade during a 17 season career--and one of the times that Paul made it to the second round his L.A. Clippers blew a 3-1 lead versus the Houston Rockets led by James Harden, one of the most notorious playoff chokers in recent memory.
The consistent pattern throughout Paul's career is that as the playoffs progress he wears down and/or gets injured, which is not surprising considering that he is barely 6 feet tall. Size matters in the NBA, and it is a testament to Isiah Thomas' greatness that he led Detroit to back to back titles as a 6-1 point guard who did not play alongside a single member of the NBA's 50th Anniversary Team. Paul is not in Thomas' class as a leader, to put it mildly.
It is worth remembering that the Suns advanced to the NBA Finals last season only after surviving Paul's awful first round performance versus the L.A. Lakers (9.2 ppg, 7.7 apg, 3.5 rpg, shooting splits of .386/.200/.750). This year in the first round thus far, Paul has played very well in the Suns' two wins, but very poorly in the Suns' two losses, including scoring four points on 2-8 field goal shooting in game four.
The people who praise Paul for what he did in games one and three are hypocrites if they just ignore Paul's failures in games two and four. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant did not alternate between being great and being awful in the playoffs--and, because of their superior size and superior skill set, Jordan and Bryant could impact the game in many other ways even when they did not shoot well.
Booker is the Suns' best player; if Paul were out of action but Booker were playing, the Suns would not be tied 2-2 against the worst team in the 2022 playoff field. Booker's greatness enabled the Suns to survive Paul's first round struggles last season, but this time Booker will not be around to bail out Paul. Statistically and historically speaking, the most likely outcome is still that the Suns will prevail because they have home court advantage and they have the superior overall team, but what we have seen thus far reaffirms the assessment that I made quite some time ago: Chris Paul is a great player, but he is not at the level that some media members keep trying to place him.