Is Chris Paul a bad teammate?
As the sources around the league were saying that he demanded to be traded from the Rockets because of the misunderstandings with James Harden, people were starting to ask themselves if Paul is really a person which you hardly can get with. There were also some voices that were saying Chris Paul didn’t spoke with Harden for months during the season, and that affected the whole group.
For some time now, Chris Paul has been known to be a prolific leader and a general on the floor, as he is a top 5 point-guard for quite some time now. Off the floor, though, there were some rumors throughout Chris’ career which were saying that he isn’t quite the teammate that you’d wish for. Rajon Rondo was one to mention it after that infamous fight that they had during a game in October 2018. Later in that night he said in an interview with ESPN that “Everyone wants to believe Chris Paul is a good guy. They don’t know he’s a horrible teammate. They don’t know how he treats people. Look at what he did last year when he was in LA; trying to get to the Clippers’ locker room. They don’t want to believe he’s capable of taunting and igniting an incident.” Yes, you would say that Rondo is saying this just because of their beef, because it is known for a long time now that these two didn’t get along with each other, but Glen Davis and Ryan Hollins, who were teammates with both Rondo and Paul, confirmed the fact that Chris is indeed, a bad teammate. Davis went on to Instagram shortly after the incident and said that “I played with both of them. CP3 is a very bad teammate.” Kenyon Martin has also talked about not quite trusting Paul as a teammate. He said that “People think Paul is a politician. People don’t trust politicians. He dos things within the locker room that some teammates question. Dealing with management and coaches, people deem it as sneaky. They think he has a hidden agenda that doesn’t include the other 14 guys.” This particular thing says a lot about how Paul handles things where the fans and the media don’t have access.
During his time in Los Angeles, people around the club were saying that he also had some misunderstandings with Blake Griffin throughout time, and even if Griffin didn’t spoke about that, the departure of Paul in 2017 can hint at some problems between those two. However, despite of all the chatter that went through these days, CP3 shut down all the rumors and denied the fact that he wanted to be traded saying that “I’ll be in Houston… I’m happy about that”. We’ll see how this will unfold going forward into the off season.
