NBA Columnist Suggests Chris Paul Playing Through An Injury

Chris Paul picked a bad time for his worst game of the postseason during Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night.

After the Suns’ 17 turnovers led to Milwaukee evening up the series at two game apiece, Paul took full responsibility for the loss.

“It was me, I had five of them,” he said via Heavy. “It was bad decision-making. That time we were down two and I tried to cross over right there, slipped, turned it over. I had some bad passes in the first half. They got a significant amount more shots than us, so for me I got to take care of the ball. We got 17 turnovers, we shoot the ball too well not to have those opportunities to score.”

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After Chris Paul’s lackluster performance, everyone knows that the veteran point guard has to play better if Phoenix is going to take the title. But one columnist took it a step further than that.

The headline for Greg Moore’s column at AZCentral.com says, “I think Chris Paul is hiding an injury, and it’s jeopardizing the Suns’ title run.”

Chris Paul was playing through a hand injury in the Western Conference finals and also missed time during the playoffs after testing positive for COVID.

Greg Moore didn’t only reveal that he believes Paul is hurt, but also that he thinks CP3 should do the right thing and hand over the point guard duties to Cameron Payne.

“If he’s hurt, he needs to hand the ball to reserve guard Cameron Payne and become the best assistant coach the NBA has ever seen. Paul has to be mature enough to know when he’s the problem and strong enough to be the solution.”

Despite the speculation, Suns head coach Monty Williams said that Chris Paul is ‘fine’ and didn’t sound too concerned with the poor performance.

“He’s fine,” Williams said. “Great players have games like that. We expect him to bounce back. He had five [turnovers], but we had 17 and they scored 24 points, you know what I mean? That was pretty much the game right there. Then you double that up with the offensive rebounding, so it wasn’t just Chris. As a team tonight, we got to take better care of the ball.”

I’d expect a much better performance out of Chris Paul in Game 5 on Saturday night.

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