Chris Paul was once dubbed the best point guard in the league but now he’s being outshined by Russell Westbrook and Stephen Curry, both of whom have been mentioned in the MVP debates. On Wednesday night however during the Clippers game against the Thunder, it was Paul who outshined Westbrook scoring a game-high 33 points to go along with nine assists while holding Westbrook, who was averaging 40 points over his past five games, to 24 and forcing him into a season-high 10 turnovers. Of course one game isn’t enough to catapult Paul’s name into the MVP conversation but that’s not his concern right now.
“It don’t matter,” Paul said of being shut out from the MVP conversation. “I just need to win a championship. You can have whatever else. I don’t care. You can have the assists and steals titles, you can have all that. I just need to win a championship.”
As he gets ready to turn 30 in May, Paul said the individual awards and accolades he used to covet don’t mean anything to him anymore.
“All I think going into a game now is what I’m going to do defensively,” Paul told ESPN.com. “I wasn’t like that when I first got into the league. I know what I was like when I was in my first and second years in the league. When we played against Phoenix I wanted to win the game, but I also wanted to go at Steve Nash. He was the guy so I needed to see what I had against him.”
“It’s defense,” Paul said. “Shots, you’re going to make them some night and some nights you’re not, but I always try to accept the challenge defensively because all those guys are scoring guards and they really carry their team so that’s what I try to do to put an imprint on the game defensively.”
