Before Chris Paul was shipped off to Oklahoma City for point guard Russell Westbrook, there were rumors about a contentious relationship between Paul and his running mate James Harden.
Many assumed that the allegations were true because there have been reports of Paul getting under the skin of teammates before, but there was nothing definitive about what exactly was causing the tension in the relationship.
On an episode of Brian Windhorst’s podcast discussing the trade, the ESPN reporter gave us a small glimpse as to what was going on between the two stars.
“I did hear this story about that Warriors series. Chris and James got into it on the court, and it was just over a schematic thing where it was a spacing issue. Chris was trying to post up, and he was standing too close to James, and it was allowing too easy of a double team, and Chris barked at James.
“And James turned to him — this was described to me by another player — and he said, ‘with you, it’s always effing something.'”
While this isn’t a huge deal in a vacuum, it certainly points to what may have been a larger issue surrounding both players. Without the ability for either guy to manage his own ego, taking direction from the other could have caused their relationship to dwindle.
Paul has always been the kind of guy who controlled the whole offense when he was on the floor, but in Houston, Harden was so much of the offense it was impossible for Paul to have that much influence.
At least with Westbrook, he does have some experience resequencing the reigns to the offense with both Kevin Durant and Paul George. There’s no telling whether things will work between those two, but it’s very clear that it wasn’t going to work with Paul and Harden anymore.
