How ironic.
Chris Paul won NBA Rookie of the Year that first year of NBA basketball in Oklahoma City when Hurricane Katrina started a chain of events which brought NBA hoops to an unlikely destination in a rogue red state where Charles Barkley thought it laughable an NBA team could reside.
The whole thing is such an oddity. The hurricane. The team’s relocation to a place where Donald Trump would eventually be revered even after being endorsed by David Duke. The two years in Oklahoma City. George Shinn the controversial owner. All of it. Surreal to be sure.
But I got to see the rookie from Wake Forest who was the fourth pick in the NBA draft win NBA Rookie of the Year honors.
He almost rented the house across the street from us in fact. That would have been cool.
You figured Chris Paul by this stage in his career would have a couple of championship rings. But unlike Russell Westbrook, who at least made it to that one NBA Finals in 2012 when James Harden played the point at times–Chris Paul has never played in an NBA Finals. Not with Oklahoma City, not with New Orleans, not with the LA Clippers, not with the same James Harden in Houston, and clearly not with Oklahoma City in 2019.
You could make the argument Sam Presti traded away the league’s worst contract in Westbrook’s for the league’s second worst contract in thirty-four year old Chris Paul.
He still has enough game to win a ring if placed with the right roster with a more limited restrained role.
So the question will be where and when Sam Presti can unload the contract for some assets as the Thunder start the arduous process of realizing precisely what it meant when Portland took Greg Oden and Durant fell to the Seattle Sonics as the second pick.
I got to watch Durant in person in both Norman and Stillwater during his one year stay at Texas with Rick Barnes where he won National Player of the Year as a freshman.
I’ve been genuinely blessed to witness all of this in person in a college market which became an NBA market solely because of Hurricane Katrina.
Before Katrina—the closest OKC could come to landing any major league franchise was when the city lost out to Columbus for the franchise which would become the NHL’s Bluejackets.
How would the NHL have done in minor league Oklahoma City? I don’t think very well because there isn’t all that much fighting like there is in minor league hockey and the beer isn’t cheap in NHL arenas. In fact, Oklahoma City currently has no professional hockey at any level after the AHL affiliation with Edmonton didn’t draw much interest.
I’d love to talk hockey with OKC mayors Mick Cornett (former) and (current) David Holt sometime– as to why Oklahoma City doesn’t have a pro hockey team at any level playing somewhere in Bricktown if Oklahoma City is indeed a major league city. By the way though… Seattle, New Orleans, and Houston don’t have major imprints of professional hockey as well.
So Chris Paul is back in Oklahoma City where there is no hockey except for OU’s club team. Durant, Westbrook, Harden, and Paul George all have moved on to cities with a ‘bit’ more diversity than Oklahoma City and Sam Presti has grown a really bad beard which reminds me of Paul Giamatti in Sideways.
Sideways–what an epic film on human dysfunction. And sideways is what it will be for Chris Paul this season until Sam Presti can unload his contract to a team which is in contention for more than a lottery draft pick this NBA season.
Here’s a Chris Paul video just to show what a baller he was back in the day at Wake Forest.