Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
Last week: The NBA’s new ‘heaves’ rule is working
Fact or Fiction: Chris Paul is a top-five point guard in NBA history
We have convened a Hall of Fame panel, made up entirely by me, to officially determine whether Chris Paul, a.k.a. The Point God, will retire at season’s end as one of the five greatest point guards in history.
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The 40-year-old Paul was sent home this week by the Los Angeles Clippers, his NBA future in peril.
On The Bill Russell Scale, which we created to rank players’ legacies across time, Paul sits fourth among point guards, trailing only Magic Johnson, Stephen Curry and Oscar Robertson. And that probably is the definitive list of players at the position who are undoubtedly superior to Paul. But even I, the creator of The Bill Russell Scale, can recognize potential flaws, since the system bends toward favoring longevity.
Only 10 other point guards cracked the Russell Scale’s top 75 — Bob Cousy, John Stockton, Russell Westbrook, Steve Nash, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Isiah Thomas, Walt Frazier, Tony Parker and Kyrie Irving — and that is a good list of players at the position who could stake a claim to being better than Paul.
Let us start by reaffirming Johnson, Curry and Robertson as the three greatest point guards ever.
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Johnson is a five-time champion and three-time MVP who served as the NBA’s best point guard — or got the highest number of MVP votes at the position — for 10 of his 13 seasons. He is widely considered one of the 10 greatest players ever, and at 6-foot-9 he held an advantage a 6-foot Paul never could replicate.
Curry is a four-time champion. He garnered more MVP votes than any other point guard in five of his 16 seasons, winning the award twice, including unanimously in 2016. And he did it all during Paul’s career, establishing himself as undeniably the greatest shooter to ever live. He is knocking on the all-time top 10.
Robertson finished top-five in MVP voting for eight straight seasons and won the award in 1964, when Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points and Bill Russell was en route to his sixth of eight straight titles, and he was the second-best player (to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) on the 1971 champion Milwaukee Bucks.
Paul could match neither feat. He never finished higher than second in the MVP race, which he did in 2008, losing to Kobe Bryant, though he placed top five on five occasions over a 14-year stretch. He collected more MVP votes than any other point guard in five of his 21 seasons (2008-09, 2012-13, 2021).
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Every one of those 10 other point guards but Stockton can make a claim that Paul cannot, either winning an MVP or a title, and Stockton owns the NBA’s all-time records for assists and steals — by a wide margin.
Paul is second to Stockton on both lists.
Having a championship ring or an MVP trophy alone does not make someone better than Paul. Russell Westbrook, for example, won the 2017 MVP award, even if some folks do not consider him worthy (I am not one of them). If you needed to win a title, though, and had to pick between Paul and Westbrook to get you there, there are few — if any — executives in the league who would choose Westbrook over Paul.
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(Exhibit A: The Houston Rockets from 2017-20.)
While Irving won as the second-best player (to LeBron James) on the 2016 champion Cleveland Cavaliers, he has never achieved the heights as a player that Paul did. Not once has Irving received an MVP vote, let alone ranked as the league’s best point guard, in any of his 14 seasons. Something similar could be said of Tony Parker, who never made an All-NBA First Team, as his San Antonio Spurs won four championships.
Paul earned four All-NBA First Team selections, as did Frazier, who won championships as the league’s best point guard for the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973. Frazier peaked over a seven-year stretch. Paul’s prime lasted twice as long, and his longevity has to count for something. That argument is close.
Chris Paul’s future is up in the air, but there’s no doubt he is headed to the Hall of Fame. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
It is closer still to Stockton, Nash, Payton and Kidd. Stockton recorded 3,254 more assists and 537 more steals in his career than Paul, though he never finished higher than seventh in any MVP voting. Nash won back-to-back MVPs in the mid-2000s, but he never made an All-Defensive roster. Paul, on the other hand, made nine All-Defensive teams, as did Payton and Kidd, who each won a championship later in his career.
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We could easily imagine Paul winning a title as a bit player on the right team. He just never found it. (At least not yet. There’s still a chance!) And we could make the case that Paul’s path to the 2021 NBA Finals as the second-best player on the Phoenix Suns was every bit as impressive as anything Payton and Kidd accomplished, including Payton’s trip to the 1996 NBA Finals and Kidd’s back-to-back Finals appearances.
But we are not here to debate whether Paul belongs among the 10 best point guards ever. The question posed was whether he is one of the best five, and I think there are two others definitely ahead of him.
Cousy won the league’s 1957 MVP honor during a span when he was the NBA’s best point guard for more than a decade. He was also the second-best player (to Russell) on six championship teams. Sure, you can make the argument that Paul would have dominated in the 1950s, but you could also say that — with the benefit of modern-day training — Cousy may have been every bit as good. What we cannot really debate is whether Paul would have been Paul if not for Cousy, for he revolutionized the position as we know it.
Thomas was the best player on back-to-back championship teams in 1989 and 1990, at a time when Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were plying their trade. Might Paul have steered those stout Detroit Pistons defenses to titles in that era? Maybe, but getting the job done must count for something.
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So, too, must Paul’s failures in big moments. His collapse as a member of the Clippers against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals remains a stain on his legacy. He was also on the floor for multiple other collapses, including Game 6 of the 2015 conference semifinals.
Injuries marred several other opportunities in the playoffs, including 2017 and 2018, but that is part of the game. Just ask Thomas, who tore his Achilles and retired at age 32 — but not after he accomplished something that Paul simply cannot touch, back-to-back titles as his team’s best player in a stacked era.
So, there you have it, folks — a pretty clear top five: Johnson, Curry, Robertson, Cousy and Thomas.
Paul just as clearly belongs in the top 10, along with Stockton, Nash, Payton and Kidd. Then, we must figure where Frazier belongs, and whom he replaces in the top 10, but that is a debate for a different day.
Determination: Fiction. Paul is more comfortably in the top 10 than he is any top five.
