Austin Rivers Jokes He and Chris Paul 'Know All the Tunnels' at Staples Center

Houston Rockets guard Austin Rivers jokingly told Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle that he and Chris Paul "know all the tunnels" at Staples Center.

Rivers was referring to a postgame incident last January in which Rockets players, including his new (and old) teammate Paul, used a back entrance at Staples Center to confront some members of the Los Angeles Clippers. Rivers was one of those Clippers, and Blake Griffin was the other, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

That spawned talk of "secret tunnels" that Paul supposedly knew about to get to the locker room in a discreet fashion. It turns out there were no secret passageways (allegedly), although the point of secret tunnels is that they're supposed to be secret, so the general public wouldn't know about them anyway. The mystery lives on.         

Moving on to known entities, after Rivers joined Paul in Houston this week, the natural question was whether those two could coexist. 

Rivers addressed that in the Feigen interview.

"I have no problems with Chris, as you guys will see," Rivers said. "Obviously, if I had a problem with Chris, I wouldn't be here. Chris has a huge input on this team as he should. He's a Hall of Fame point guard. If that was that serious, I wouldn't be here. That will show you that's not real."

The Rockets have games in Los Angeles on Feb. 21 against the Lakers and April 3 against the Clippers. Chances are the contests will be more copacetic than the Rockets' loss to the Clippers last January, but if things get heated, Rivers and Paul know their way around.