Chris Paul Blog Day

By: Jim Eichenhofer, Hornets.com
To honor Chris Paul’s 23rd birthday, the Hornets fan website At the Hive developed the idea to host a “Chris Paul Blog Day,” and asked numerous sites to blog about the 6-foot point guard today. We would like to thank At the Hive for organizing this event and inviting us to participate. Here is Hornets.com’s contribution to CP Blog Day:

By now, everyone is well-versed on the MVP-caliber season Chris Paul is having in 2007-08. Everyone’s probably pretty familiar with the statistics, including the fact that he became the first player in over a decade to average 20 points and 10 assists. But numbers tell only a small portion of the story of what the third-year point guard has meant to the New Orleans Hornets in the best season in franchise history.
Here are a few things you might not realize about CP3:
He’s the ideal teammate off the court.
When the Hornets go on road trips, Paul enjoys organizing group outings to the local bowling alley or theater. Everyone on the roster is invited, which often results in large gatherings of players, instead of everyone going their separate way or hanging out on their own in their hotel rooms.
When the Hornets are in New Orleans for homestands, he often invites teammates to his house for dinner, or to play video games.
Last fall, Paul was the ringleader when a significant number of players arrived in New Orleans weeks before they were required to report. The team bonding that took place then and the commitment shown to this season helped set the tone for a 2007-08 in which the Hornets have exceeded all national expectations.
He’s the ideal teammate on the court.
Paul is so consistent in this category that I can actually give you at least two examples from last night’s game that demonstrate what I mean. There was one play in the second quarter where Julian Wright got a little overzealous and threw an errant pass toward Paul that went out of bounds on the right sideline in the backcourt. Paul had a look of frustration on his face as he made a futile attempt to chase Wright’s pass, but as soon as he turned back toward Wright, his expression changed. He didn’t want the rookie to think, “Uh oh. I just screwed up and now the star of the team is furious with me.”
Along the same lines, during one timeout Tuesday you could see Paul standing near the scorer’s table, pumping up Melvin Ely, who hadn’t played in weeks prior to this series. Paul basically was telling Ely, “We believe in you and know you can help us.” Who knows what impact that made, but Ely did a nice job on both ends against Tim Duncan.
He “gets it.”
The team’s basketball operations staff raves about the way Paul treats people he encounters on road trips, such as arena workers in other cities. They say that there has been a noticeable change in the way road crowds react to Paul’s introduction in the starting lineup this season. He is becoming a well-liked player, not just for his highlight-reel drives and passes, but also because the word is traveling around the league about how he conducts himself away from the game.
Throughout his incredible third year in the NBA, Paul has had people telling him every day how great he is – whether it’s reporters, fans, whomever – but he’s mastered the art of deflecting that praise to his teammates. After Game 2 vs. San Antonio, when asked about how he held Tony Parker to 11 points, Paul immediately began discussing how Parker’s subpar game was due to the help defense provided by Morris Peterson, Bonzi Wells and Jannero Pargo. When fans started chanting “MVP!” for him in late January, Paul was frequently asked for his opinion of those cheers. He usually responded by smiling and saying that it was too early for fans to proclaim teammate David West the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.
He’s made this one of the best places to work in the NBA.
I figured I’d close my Chris Paul Blog Day entry with a personal story. In summer 2003, I applied for the website writer job with the Cleveland Cavaliers. It would have been perfect timing to go there, because the Cavs had just drafted local high school hoops hero LeBron James a couple weeks earlier. Since I’m from western New York, it would have been perfect for me, because I could’ve moved to Cleveland and only been a few hours’ drive from family and relatives. Cavs.com picked Joe Gabriele instead (a very good hire, by the way).
Two years later, in the fall of 2005, I saw online that the same position was open with the Hornets. It meant moving halfway across the country to Oklahoma City, a place I knew very little about, other than that it had agreed to host the Hornets after Hurricane Katrina. The Hornets were coming off an 18-64 season, facing an uncertain future and in full-scale rebuilding mode. In other words, the job wasn’t nearly as good on paper as the one I’d applied for in Cleveland.
Look at things now. The Hornets were dreadful in that 18-win season, but they’re now poised to reach the conference finals for the first time in their 20-year history. Sure, LeBron led the Cavs to an NBA Finals appearance in 2007, but they’re going to have to go through Boston to get out of Round 2 this spring. And no offense to Cleveland, but I now live in one of the most exciting and warmest cities in America. After living in New York, I’m thrilled to report that I don’t even know where my ice scraper is at the moment.
There are so many reasons why the Hornets franchise is in infinitely better shape today than it was in 2005, when disaster struck the Gulf South region. But near the top of the list has to be the 6-foot point guard who has rapidly ascended to NBA superstardom.