DENVER, CO – Thanks to being the fourth player in NBA history to score 30-plus points in the postseason, Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul is looking—and playing like the real NBA MVP.
Paul, arguably one of the best point guards in NBA history—and master of the mid-range shot from the elbow—scored 37 points and dished out seven assists in 40 minutes, while shooting 14-17 from the field in a 125-118 series-clinching win over the Denver Nuggets.
In four games vs. Denver, the 36-year-old former Wake Forest standout averaged a double-double in scoring 25.5 points, 10.3 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game. In ten postseason games, Paul has averaged 15.7 points, 8.7 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals.
Thanks to his effienct shooting and passing, he effortlessly eliminated the league’s newly crowned MVP in Nikola Jokic and made a belated case as to why he should have won the award instead.
A victim of hard luck and injuries throughout his entire post-season career, Paul is now four games away from his first-ever NBA Finals. The first time he has made it back to the West Finals since he was in Houston, where he would suffer a hamstring injury, causing him to miss the Rockets’ series against eventual champion, Golden State.
Some could argue that if Paul didn’t get injured, that it would have been Houston in the 2018 NBA Finals vs. Cleveland instead of Golden State, as the Rockets were up 3-2, but sadly, we will never know that as the Warriors were able to win the final two games of the series.
In what may his last playoff run, Paul is destined to finally make it to the Finals, with a chance to hoist the Larry O’Brien, in what may be his proverbial sunset, in what has been a already brilliant—if not sometimes snake-bitten—career.
With some time off before the Finals, and a chance to heal, Paul is finally where he deserves to have been all along, playing at an MVP-like level with a chance to win a championship.