Some mile-high drama preceded Chris Paul’s stunning Clippers divorce.
Los Angeles assistant Jeff Van Gundy allegedly confronted Paul on a plane several days before the point guard’s exit over Paul assuming too much “leeway,” according to NBA insider Chris Haynes.
Van Gundy believed Paul had changed a coaching assignment down the stretch of the team’s Nov. 29 home loss to Dallas (all times US).
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“I was told that Jeff Van Gundy told Chris Paul, ‘Listen, you might have had leeway in other places to be able to change up defensive coverages, but you don’t have that leeway here,” Haynes said during an appearance on Prime’s NBA coverage.
“And that was just one of the minor verbal incidents between Jeff Van Gundy and Chris Paul, that was one of a few during this brief span with the Clippers.”
Paul’s release caught the NBA community by surprise, happening at 3 a.m. ET on Wednesday when Paul announced via Instagram that the team sent him back to Los Angeles from Atlanta.
While Paul enjoyed some of his best years playing for the franchise, ESPN reported that the team felt he became “disruptive” and head coach Tyronn Lue no longer spoke with the future Hall of Famer.
Hayes previously reported that Paul sought a meeting with Lue to discuss the supposed “negative presence” some alleged he had become, but it never came to fruition.
“Paul had been vocal in holding management, coaches and players accountable, which the team felt became disruptive,” ESPN’s Shams Charania reported.
The purported friction between Paul and the coaching staff aligns with Haynes’ story, and provides more context to a cryptic Instagram Stories post from Paul last Sunday.
Paul raised some eyebrows last week when he posted the definition of leeway to his account.
Hayes said that post stemmed from what happened down the stretch of the Clippers’ 114-110 home loss to the Mavericks one day prior.
He explained that with Kawhi Leonard on a minutes restriction, he struggled to guard Klay Thompson late in the game after stretches on the bench.
Thompson scored 23 points in 26 minutes that night.
During a timeout late in the fourth quarter, Paul allegedly went to Leonard and said: “Hey man, are you fresh enough? You feel good? You feel like you can stick with Klay Thompson?”
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Paul, per Haynes, also said to teammates that they may want to switch the defensive assignments, noting they may want Leonard to get looser before he guarded Thompson.
The Clippers switched the assignment for the remainder of the game, but could not rally for the win.
Van Gundy reportedly then called a meeting with Paul on the team’s plane to its Monday game in Miami and asked him if he had changed the defensive assignment.
“Chris said, ‘No, I didn’t change up the assignment,’ I just suggested, ‘Hey, we might want to have somebody else guarding Klay right now because Kawhi is not warm yet,‘” Haynes said.
Despite the reports, Lue didn’t mention any animosity between the coaches and Paul while addressing the team’s decision earlier this week.
“It just didn’t work out like we thought it would. I just think it wasn’t a good fit for what he was looking for. It is what it is,” Lue said.
“Do I want to see CP go out like this? No. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s been a friend of mine over the years. You never wanna see a great go out like this. But I’m pretty sure he will find something, because he’s a great player. … I didn’t wanna see it end like this.”
Paul appeared in 16 games and averaged just 2.9 points for Los Angeles, and the lingering question is whether any team will sign him.
The 40-year-old has not won a title and could go ring chasing, as the Knicks could make sense as a potential partner.
-This story was originally published in the New York Post and reproduced with permission.
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