Across sports, superstars have been labeled many things, fairly or unfairly. One that gets stuck on players who have not won a championship is that of “player who can’t win the big game.” In football, it’s usually quarterbacks. Dan Marino got hit with it. Tony Romo gets it. John Elway and Peyton Manning got it (before they won championships). Basketball, however, doesn’t lend itself to singling out one position, though. With basketball, fans and media are equal opportunity haters. All types of players in basketball have been hit with the “can’t win the big one” label. Charles Barkley. Karl Malone. Steve Nash. Dirk Nowitzki got it until he won a championship. LeBron James got it probably more than anybody … then he won a couple titles … and still kind of gets it. These guys are looked at as the anti-heroes: players on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to “winner guys” like Joe Montana, Bill Russell, and Michael Jordan (although with Jordan, it was once fair to ask, “Can he get past the Pistons in the playoffs?). Now, it’s Chris Paul. Can Chris Paul win the big game? Can he reach the Conference Finals? This narrative has grown every season, and with the Clippers’ loss to the Rockets, it continues. But what, if any, are the merits of surmising a player is incapable of winning a big game, or reaching a certain achievement?
The problem with this type of labeling is that the logic behind it works backwards. It starts with the answer, then fits the equation accordingly to reach that answer – like the middle-school student who steals the answer out of the teacher’s book, then has to try and do the long division to show how they arrived at that answer. It becomes a guess-and-check exercise. With math, however, we deal in concrete answers; in sports, we deal with our own revolving set of expectations.
Although Chris Paul has not made it out of the second round of the playoffs, he can indeed win a big game, despite the nationwide narrative telling you otherwise. What if I told you a superstar player hit the game-winning shot playing hurt during a Game 7 of a playoff series against the defending champions? That’s a big game, right? Well, Chris Paul did that a mere eight games ago. But because the Clippers lost to the Rockets, the media and fans retroactively go back and decide that Game 7 game-winner doesn’t constitute a “big game,” for really no other reason than being able to selfishly continue to hold this dark cloud over the likes of Chris Paul. We determine big games/not big games subjectively to feed our insatiable need for around-the-clock story-lines. Time after time, these “can’t win the big one” guys have proven the critics wrong (refer back to the first paragraph for a few). But the angry mob who doles out these labels never admit defeat, they just take their pitchforks and torches and storm over to the next player who fits their ill-conceived, ready-made narrative.
Maybe my criticism of this style of criticism is wrong; maybe there is something inherently blocking Chris Paul from reaching a conference finals … or maybe he has just found himself on flawed teams in a tough conference. Paul led the New Orleans Hornets to the second round several times surrounded by David West (an All-Star caliber player, but has never really been the best player on his own team over an extended period of time), Tyson Chandler (who, when he played with Paul, was still considered to be somewhat of a bust given where he was taken in the draft and his difficulties on offense), and a bunch of role-players with redundant skill-sets (Peja Stojakovic, Morris Peterson, Bonzi Wells, Bobby Jackson, and so on). In Los Angeles, Paul landed with superstar talent Blake Griffin, but little else to start with because the team lost so many assets in order to trade for Paul. Despite Griffin’s development, there are still obvious holes. Their bench is inconsistent at best, incompetent at worst. Matt Barnes is the only perimeter defender who can who can capably go head-to-head with an opposing wing, and their best defender (DeAndre Jordan) can’t shoot free throws, which leaves him susceptible to the hack-a-player strategy.
It is interesting to note that Chris Paul is held responsible for being on inferior teams, while the player who got hit with the “can’t win the big game” stigma the most recently – LeBron James – got criticized for going to Miami and playing on teams that were too good. Paul has to absorb the criticism for his team’s failures when they lose to better teams, and James gets it when his teams beat lesser teams … talk about a fickle set of expectations. (To be fair, Doc Rivers is getting as much, if not more criticism than Chris Paul for the Clippers’ loss, but that’s sort of besides the point, as it pertains to Paul’s career, or the “can’t win the big one” idea in general.)
To assess Chris Paul’s postseason performance on a more individualistic basis, one needs to look no further than the fact that he’s the only player in NBA history to have a career postseason stat line of 20-plus points and 9-plus assists per game.
This is not to excuse Chris Paul entirely. He is and was the best player on every team he has been on. To some degree, his team’s accomplishments (or lack of) are a reflection on him. Moreover, this is not to excuse us – sports fans and the sports media – either. In fact, it is to point out that we excuse ourselves far too often. If Chris Paul never reaches a finals or conference finals, that has to go somewhere in his career obituary, but to make it the leading statement would be to tragically reduce his career down to the most negative aspect. Chris Paul has been a top-3 point guard in the NBA since he first step foot on a professional basketball court; he has, and will continue to help his team(s) win in the regular season and playoffs, it’s up to us to notice.
