Let's Not Lump Chris Paul with Dwight Howard as a Coach Killer Yet
Chris Paul isn't the reason that Vinny Del Negro is out of a job.
Paul has vehemently denied any part of the Los Angeles Clippers' decision to not extend Del Negro's contract and is reportedly "angry" with the franchise that such implications were ever made.
Gary Sacks, the Clippers vice president of basketball operations, went on damage-control duty after Paul's anger was made public. Per ESPN.com's Kevin Arnovitz, Sacks claimed that the decision to let Del Negro walk was an "organizational" move "from the top down."
So why is the player responsible for making L.A. a legitimate two-team town in, a first-team All-NBA performer on both sides of the floor in each of the last two seasons, catching so much heat for Del Negro's dismissal?
Because the team's long-time owner, Donald Sterling, the man most responsible for creating the mess that Paul has helped clean up, threw his free-agent point guard under the bus in an interview with T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times.
Simers asked if Del Negro was given his exit to appease Paul. Sterling's response? "I always want to be honest and not saying anything that is not true, so I'd rather not say anything."
Sterling proceeded to put one foot in his mouth and perhaps the other on Paul's back, potentially pushing him out the door.
"This is a players' league, and, unfortunately, if you want to win you have to make the players happy," he said. "If you have special players, and special players think that they know the best opportunity to win, you have to support them."
There's no need to read between the lines or guess at what Sterling might be implying with these comments. Del Negro led the team to a franchise-best 56-win regular season, but that wasn't enough for Paul.
But if what Sterling said is true, why would Paul be so upset? He wouldn't be the first player to orchestrate a coach's exit, and certainly wouldn't the last:
So maybe Paul's simply firing back at some incriminating, falsified claims. Maybe he played as big of a role in Del Negro filing into the unemployment line as you and I did.
Now, Paul certainly could have kept Del Negro in L.A. if he wanted. If the point guard showed any sort of public desire to keep his coach around, Del Negro would be finalizing his contract extension right now.
But that's not Paul's responsibility. Maybe he did say everything by saying nothing, but this wasn't Deron Williams pushing Jerry Sloan into early retirement or Dwight Howard walking into the most awkward interview in NBA history.
Williams and Howard? Now those are some coach killers.
After the Sloan debacle, Williams helped arrange Avery Johnson's ouster in Brooklyn. He lambasted Johnson's offensive system, the cause of his own early-season struggles in his mind, and then "totally quit" on his coach.
Howard publicly embraced his coach-killing reputation at one time, saying simply, "I was cool with it," when asked about Orlando's decision to fire Brian Hill.
Hill's removal, of course, led to the ill-fated Howard-Van Gundy pairing, which then led to the Howard-Mike D'Antoni combo with the Los Angeles Lakers. And guess what, Howard still isn't happy, just more discreet about his dissatisfaction.
Paul's nothing like these two. He doesn't burn bridges with former coaches; he builds lasting relationships with them.
But that doesn't mean you have to keep Paul and Howard entirely separate. Not with the financial flexibility of Howard's home-town Atlanta Hawks perhaps being great enough to lure both him and Paul to the ATL over the summer, something that Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution feels has a "real chance" of happening.
NBA superpowers are far from a foreign concept, and one led by perhaps the league's premier floor general and most dominant center is causing analysts to salivate already:
Howard's first foray into a star-studded roster didn't work out so well, but a pairing with Paul would be unlike anything he's ever experienced:
And who knows, maybe Paul could even teach Howard the right way to handle a coach's dismissal.
