JJ Redick has always been analytical, but his thoughts on Chris Paul’s legacy came from a more personal place. As Paul heads into the final season of a Hall of Fame career, Redick, now the Lakers’ head coach but once CP’s teammate in Los Angeles, offered one of the clearest and most genuine tributes Paul has ever received. It wasn’t a debate segment. It wasn’t a list of accolades. It was a look at the player through the lens of someone who shared the grind with him.
“It’ll be whatever people decide it is. I’m not going to craft a narrative. I just know him as a human being and a teammate and a brother, and the arc of our relationship is very interesting, from going for a decade plus of quite literally hating each other to feeling like he’s a part of my family. Getting to watch him evolve as a player, as a competitor, as a leader in the later stages, you know, particularly after I retired, has been actually really fun for me.”
“It’s rare that you see guys who have accomplished as much as he’s accomplished grow in the ways that he grew both as a player and a person. We used to talk about this to the Clippers all the time, like squeezing the juice out of a possession, and he was the master at that.’
“He squeezed the juice out of every possession. And that’s the micro version of him: manipulating the game, thinking the game, squeezing the juice out of every possession. He squeezed the juice out of his career. He has done that for over two decades, and it’s remarkable for a player his size to be able to compete at that level for so long and so consistently.”
“The game will miss him. I’ll say that. The game will miss him, and I’m sure he’ll have some amazing opportunities in retirement.”
For Redick, that was the real key to Paul’s greatness. It wasn’t the All-Star totals or the assist titles. It was the way Paul saw the game. Every possession was processed like a puzzle. Every read had a purpose. Every decision had intent. Redick made it clear that Paul thought basketball at a level few players ever reach.
He even told a small story that explained the early friction between them.
“My rookie year, I was in a suit, and this is when we hated each other. He came over during a dead ball. He was in the left corner and I was behind the bench, and he goes, ‘Yeah, this is a lot different from college, isn’t it, J. J.?'”
“And I said, I hate that guy. We had our battles, but no, when I was his teammate, the thing that I loved the most was our nonverbal synergy. And it’s hard to capture that in a single play or a single moment, but I always talk about teams feeling like an organism that function together.”
“And when a team is really functioning together, there’s a connective tissue to that. I don’t think there was a player that I played with that I felt more of a connective tissue than Chris Paul.”
When asked what people miss in discussions about Paul’s legacy, Redick didn’t dance around the point.
“Yeah, again, I hate saying this. I hope he doesn’t win an NBA championship, cuz that would mean the Clippers win an NBA championship, and we don’t. But he’s, to me, the ultimate winner. And I have said this, there’s a guy that works in the NBA that I’ve known for almost 20 years now, and we talk about this all the time.”
“There’s guys that have won championships that I wouldn’t say are winning players, and there’s guys that have never won a championship that, to me, are the ultimate winners. And that’s who Chris Paul is. He’s the ultimate winner.”
Coming from someone who lived through the highs and heartbreaks of the Lob City era, those words carry real weight. Redick watched Paul elevate every team he played for, the leadership, the accountability, the structure, and do it for almost twenty years at six feet tall in a league where size rules everything.
As Paul enters his final season, the recognition is pouring in. LeBron James saluted him. Younger guards still study him. Coaches still learn from his film.
And Redick summed it up perfectly. A ring can define a franchise. It doesn’t always define a player. Chris Paul didn’t need one to prove he was a winner. He already did that in every possession he ever touched.
