Does LA Clippers' Retraction Make Chris Paul Situation Better or Worse?

In an apparent effort to appease Chris Paul after his portrayal in the firing of Vinny Del Negro, the Los Angeles Clippers tried to clean up the mess they've left.

But does that really do anything for Paul?

The Clippers decided to let Del Negro go back in mid-May, a move that wasn't exactly shocking. Del Negro's contract had run out and he has constantly been lambasted as a poor coach to take the Clippers into the future.

In an interview with T.J. Simers of The Los Angeles Times a few days later, Clippers owner Donald Sterling stuck his foot directly into his own mouth, as he's been known to do.

When asked if it was a move made solely to keep Paul in Los Angeles, Sterling was hardly cryptic. "I always want to be honest and not say anything that is not true, so I'd rather not say anything."

Never knowing when enough is enough, Sterling continued when Simers asked him whether or not he thought his players were calling the shots:

"

This is a players' league, and, unfortunately, if you want to win you have to make the players happy. Don't you think that's true?

But if you have special players, and special players think that they know the best opportunity to win, you have to support them.

"

It's not that difficult to narrow down just who the "special players" on the Clippers would be: Blake Griffin and Chris Paul.

Then, if you want to do a bit more inferring, which "special player" might the Clippers be trying to appease? Probably the guy who's a free agent this summer.

According to ESPN's Chris Broussard, Paul was upset with the way the Clippers and Sterling put him on blast. Being viewed as a guy who gets a coach fired in the NBA can be a very negative light for any player, no matter how popular.

Paul was made out to be a coach-killer by the organization, which was not only a horrible move for the Clippers but a bad move as far as the reputation of their most important free agent goes.

In an attempt to super-glue their land mine back together, the Clippers released a statement to ESPN taking all the credit for firing Del Negro and absolving Paul of all responsibility:

"

The decision not to extend a contract to Vinny Del Negro was an organizational decision from the top down. Our front office evaluated the season and Vinny's three years here before making this move, and our conclusion and feeling was that we needed a change.

"

See, that totally seals it! A front office that is well-known for public faux pas on a regular basis over the past three decades said Paul never had anything to do with it.

Never mind the fact that the team's owner made the most thinly veiled allusions possible toward Paul being at least partly responsible for Del Negro's firing.

It's not like Sterling has some sort of a bad reputation with his employees or anything...right?

Sterling's idiocy, the front office's scrambling to clean up after him and the fact that firing Del Negro was the right thing to do aside, Paul somehow comes out of all of this looking no different than he did a few weeks ago.

The extremely vilified Clippers owner can give anybody a tongue-lashing only to have them come out on the other side looking spit-shined.

It seems extremely likely that Paul did have something to do with Del Negro getting fired. Whether it was repeated complaining or just a few snide comments here and there, something had to give the front office the notion that Paul wasn't a fan of Del Negro.

However, Paul's reputation remains relatively unchanged for a few reasons.

First, Del Negro's days in Los Angeles should have been numbered in the first place. If it took a few comments from a player for the team to get rid of a coach that needed to be let go, then so be it.

Second, the Clippers organization handled this in such a Clippers-ish way that it seems to come out looking more rotten than Paul does.

The story here seems to be more along the lines of "Sterling Throws Paul Under the Bus" than "Paul gets Del Negro Fired."

While the Clippers' press release doesn't really make things better for Paul—or worse, for that matter—it seems that they weren't that bad in the first place.

The only action they can take to really keep things from getting worse is hiring somebody to get Sterling to keep his mouth shut when it comes to stuff like this.