So LeBron,Kawhi,Curry,Durant, and Harden all have a superstar to play with but Giannis who has thrust himself into the conversation for best player in the league has to win a championship over the next 2 years with Khris Middleton? By no means am I taking any shots at Khris Middleton but Chris Paul deserves a shot at a championship and what better way to do it than to win it with the MVP of the NBA who your former teammate James Harden could not win a championship with
. Imagine if Giannis Antetokoumpo and Chris Paul ends up being a devastating combo which the league would have no answer for. Now the reason I believe Chris Paul would put the Bucks over the top is because of the amount of shooters the Bucks have, Sterling Brown,Kyle Korver,Wesley Mattews, Pat Connaughton, and Brook Lopez.
For OKC Khris Middleton at 6’8 could play the small-forward position and allow for the Thunder to run a lineup of Dennis,Shai, and Khris depending on how OKC chooses to use Dennis Schroeder who Billy Donovan could use as a scorer or facilitator alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who is more of a point guard Billy Donovan can run an actual offense around compared to Russell Westbrook who was a much more harder to coach due to his superstar status and explovsive guard who thrives more off athleticism than shooting and off ball-movement like Shai. If OKC plans on running more of a motion offense with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander the Thunder need to find complimentary pieces which compliment his game like Khris Middleton who can slot right in at the 3 and give the Thunder defense and 3 point shooting.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are currently on a rebuild and by no means expected to compete for the NBA Championship this season but what a story it would be for Chris Paul and Giannis Antetokoumpo to win a NBA Title together in Milwaukee this coming season? What Chris Paul struggled with in Houston will not be the case in Milwaukee, all the rifts with James Harden on the bench and Chris Paul wanting to run the offense but not being able to due to Mike D’Antoni giving James Harden the green light to take 15-20 3 pointers a game which is absolutely an astronomical amount of 3’s, look back in the 73-74 years of the NBA existence and not even Kobe Bryant himself who was known to be a gunner ever took that amount of 3’s in a game. Kobe Bryant said it himself the Rockets will not win a championship playing the style of offense they were running.
It seemed to me that this past season the offense became heavily reliant on James Harden being that Chris Paul only played a total of only 116 games in his 2 seasons in Houston and James Harden had to shoulder the load offensively putting on an offensive display like never before in NBA history averaging a blistering 36 ppg on his way to his second scoring title. James Harden practically said Giannis Antetokoumpo had a great season but so did his team and felt he got snubbed for MVP once again, realistically we could make the case Harden should be a 3-4 time MVP by now, he is other wordly and a lock for the Hall-of-Fame as we speak. Chris Paul is only 33 years old and getting payed an immense amount of money, he is due to make $38 million this coming season but for the Milwaukee Bucks if they want to make sure they sign Giannis Antetokoumpo to an extension and keep him around long-term I believe signing Chris Paul would be the answer. Chris Paul is locked in for the next 3 seasons and will be paid upwards of $44 million but would you rather pay him that and have Giannis Antetokoumpo around long-term or watch Giannis flee after 2 more seasons of failure because let’s face it he does not have enough to compete with the Clippers,Lakers,Rockets, or even the Warriors this coming season.
By no means am I taking any shots at Mike D’Antoni who is a mastermind of high-powered offenses engineering the Nash led Phoenix Suns who ran a 7 seconds or less offense which ran opposing teams out of the gym in the late 2000’s but Mike D’Antoni had his struggles with former superstar Carmelo Anthony in New York, maybe he has the perfect formula now with an elite floor general like Russell Westbrook who will push the tempo a lot like Nash did for the Phoenix Suns. Chris Paul is more a half-court point guard and would fit in rather perfectly with Giannis Antetokoumpo, I respect Giannis as a floor general and the strides he has made year after year on his way to possibly the best player in the game but you can’t give him the responsibility to engineer your offense, he is not an elite ball handler and Chris Paul flourishes at what he needs to perfect which is becoming a shooter coming off-screens whether its off the dribble or shaking a defender out of their shoes for a mid-range or 3 point shot.
Mike Budenholzer runs more of a motion offense than Mike D’Antoni does which includes a lot of screens and players making back door cuts for lay-ups, Chris Paul could become the primary ball-handler on the Bucks and allow for Giannis Antetokoumpo to focus more on defense and focus more on scoring. That is why Giannnis Antetokoumpo needs to keep perfecting his craft and develop a 2 dribble pull-up game, if he can develop that he is hands down the best player in the league and it should be no question. Chris Paul wants more control of the offense and I side with him in the dilemma of the Rockets’ offense which was not able to get them past the Warriors these past playoffs. Seemed like Chris Paul became more an more disengaged these past playoffs and checked out and I don’t blame him, when I saw him out there with Eric Gordon,PJ Tucker,Gerald Green, and Clint Capela while James Harden was on the bench it seemed like the offense ran more fluid and everyone was touching the basketball.
To conclude I respect James Harden as basketball player but he has to make some sacrifices if he wants to win some championships, those sacrifices were not made alongside Chris Paul and that became painfully obvious after they failed to get past the Golden State Warriors who lost Kevin Durant throughout the series. There was no excuse for James Harden and Chris Paul to not be able to get past the Golden State Warriors this past season with Chris Paul and James Harden out there so I could understand why Daryl Morey and the Rockets chose to move in a different direction and retool, I just wouldn’t blame Chris Paul for the Rockets’ fallout. Chris Paul is becoming sort of an afterthought due to injuries and him blowing his shot at his first title 2018 where he shredded the Warriors defense and had them down 3-2 until he suffered a season-ending injury. If Chris Paul is indeed healthy and I am pretty sure he is playing with a chip on his shoulder and out for vengeance, why not tag team with Giannis Antetokoumpo and go full-throttle these coming playoffs for a NBA Championship, the time is now.
D-NBA 