Whitlock: Chris Paul epitomizes NBA’s weak, black matriarchal culture



We can stop calling Chris Paul a leader. He’s not.

We can quit comparing the Phoenix point guard to Isiah Thomas. It’s an insult to the all-time Pistons great.

We can move on from feeling sorry for Paul because David Stern blocked his trade to the Kobe Bryant-led Lakers in 2011. Kobe couldn’t fix what’s wrong with the perennial locker-room cancer.

Chris Paul is a problem disguised as a solution.

We know that now after his latest postseason collapse. His NBA-leading, 64-win Phoenix Suns exited the playoffs Sunday night in the most embarrassing fashion possible. The Dallas Mavericks routed Phoenix 123-90 in Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals. Phoenix trailed by 30 at halftime, by 46 in the third quarter. Paul didn’t make a bucket until the third quarter of an elimination game. I can’t remember an alleged all-time great coming up much smaller in an elimination game, especially on a team that was favored to win the title.

Phoenix led this series 2-0 before losing four of the last five games, marking the fifth time a Paul-led team blew a 2-0 playoff advantage. It’s a record-setting standard. Paul is the first NBA player to blow five different playoff series after leading 2-0. He broke his own record. He was the first to blow four.

I was once one of the people arguing that Paul is the modern-day Isiah Thomas. I fell for his polished image and regular-season act. I ignored Paul’s numerous critics inside the NBA who swore that Paul’s State Farm-crafted good-guy image was fraudulent.

CP2-oh is not Zeke. Paul is Charlie Brown, the cartoon character who can’t kick a football. The playoffs are Lucy, the girl who repeatedly clowns Charlie Brown by pulling the football at the last second.

This Dallas series snapped me out of my Chris Paul fantasy. He’s no leader. At age 37, in his 17th season, he’s one of the most immature players in the league. He symbolizes my discomfort with modern NBA players and culture. Both are filled with feminine energy and emotion. The NBA perfectly reflects the emasculation of black men and our cultural embrace of matriarchal leadership.

As bad as Sunday’s Game 7 was for Paul, he really exposed himself in Game 4.

With his mother and wife seated directly behind the Suns' bench, Paul fouled out in just 23 minutes of action. He scored just five points in a 10-point loss. Shortly after departing the game with his sixth foul, Paul erupted on a young Mavericks fan who tapped Paul’s mother’s back to get her attention. Paul’s overreaction caused security to remove the fan from the arena. The Mavericks subsequently banned the fan from attending any more Dallas games this season.

After the game, Paul profanely complained that the fan “laid hands on” his mother. Video showed the young boy lightly tapping her shoulder. Paul said his mother and wife felt unsafe in the arena. It was later revealed that the young fan jokingly offered Paul’s mother a hug.

Of course, corporate media and blue-check Twitter defended Paul’s irrational and emotional response. He was defending and protecting his wife and mother.

No, he wasn’t. He was deflecting from his embarrassing performance. He was smearing a young white fan. He was summoning a social media lynch mob to punish a child for allegedly acting inappropriately toward his mother and wife.

Chris Paul exhibited the kind of racist behavior and mindset that led to Emmett Till’s death in 1955. A white woman and white men exaggerated the behavior of Till, summoned a lynch mob, and punished Till.

The NBA and its players do not want to combat racism. The black players – from Chris Paul to Russell Westbrook to LeBron James – want to benefit from racism. They want to establish themselves as a protected class of people above others who do not look like them.

Why would Chris Paul seat his mother and wife directly behind the Suns' bench during a road playoff game? It’s arguably the most hostile environment in professional sports. Opposing fans can directly communicate with the visiting team.

Chris Paul knows this. But, again, Paul isn’t a leader. He’s a spoiled, entitled jock. He’s a beta male afraid to tell his wife and mother no. He’s a believer in the matriarchy.

Let me make another provocative analogy. Paul’s thinking mirrors the mindset of Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend. Taylor was the young woman killed when police tried to serve a drug warrant at her apartment in Louisville. Claiming the police never identified themselves, Walker fired his gun and shot a police officer. The police returned fire, killing Taylor.

Let’s think this through. Walker claimed he believed intruders were trying to break into the apartment. He and Taylor arose from bed. He grabbed his gun. He and Taylor walked into the living room of the apartment to see who was at the door.

What man doesn’t tell his woman to fall back and seek safety when he believes trouble is trying to enter their home? A beta male. A believer in the matriarchy. Someone devoid of masculine leadership qualities.

What man places his woman in harm’s way?

Chris Paul is Kenneth Walker. Paul dropped his mother and wife into a fire. And when things got hot, Paul melted down. We shouldn’t be surprised. The NBA is filled with beta black males who are led by their emotions. They spend their free time getting their hair braided, placed in buns, and color-coded. When they’re not at the beauty shop, they’re walking down arena runways in whatever outfit their LGBTQ+ stylists instructed them to wear.

The matriarchy rules black culture. You can see it in the NBA. You can see it in Chris Paul. Our leadership model is completely broken. Our highest level of accomplishment is victimhood. Paul achieved his goal in Game 4 when a little white kid tapped his mama’s shoulder.

Paul cast himself as a victim. The Suns followed his lead.

Greg Couch: Chris Paul can’t lose tonight, even if his Phoenix Suns fall to the Milwaukee Bucks



In one week, Chris Paul has gone from the anointed one to a tragic charity case with his legacy on the line. ESPN basketball savant Stephen A. Smith called it "sad" and underscored his point by making a long, pensive face.

Boo-hoo.

Look: After blowing a 2-0 series lead, Paul and the Phoenix Suns face NBA Finals elimination tonight in their best-of-seven series with the Milwaukee Bucks. If the Bucks win, then Paul will reach his 16th straight year without a championship. The reaction from an adoring media is already funeral-like. That just means they don't really know what a champion is and that they never believed in the first place that Paul is among the all-time great point guards.

Are we really supposed to feel sorry for him now? Are we really at the tragedy phase? This is the moment for Paul. This is it. No one has the right to a championship. It is not a lifetime achievement award. You actually have to take it. You have to be at your best at the hardest possible times. Paul has the chance to prove himself now.

These NBA Finals have been a referendum on Paul. At least, they have been since we got past the episode of Real Housewives of ESPN starring Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor: Two strong women squabble for power, turf, and a bigger contract.

We talk about Paul's legacy as if his years as a star will never have happened without a championship on top. The truth is that we think too much about legacies. You play to win a championship, not to win history. And while sports writers seem to think it'll be tragic for Paul to lose tonight, he actually has a safety net. You saw it in Game 5, sitting courtside.

LeBron James. A blatant attempt to try to get his good friend Paul to join him with the Lakers next year. He looked like a college coach sitting in the stands admiring a star high school player.

"I'm proud as hell for CP," James told ESPN. "I'm here for CP. He came to my first Finals appearance, and this is me giving it back to him. We support each other. We've been a brotherhood since we came into the league."

So Paul has two NBA championships just sitting there waiting for him to take. This year's with Phoenix and next year's with LeBron.

In a world of concocted superteams, all titles are not created equal. Paul's possible titles come with different meanings and values. They tell separate stories about Paul and leave opposite legacies.

How would you feel if Paul joined the Lakers to win a title? I would not blame him one bit.

Paul was supposed to have been traded years ago to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he would've set up shop with Kobe Bryant. It's true that Paul would have won championships with Kobe had NBA commissioner David Stern not canceled the trade when other team owners complained that the Lakers would be too good.

The fear was that the Lakers would also get Dwight Howard and form a superteam.

It seems so unfair now, as the league is built on superteams, with star players recruiting other ones. It comes across as different, contrived, fake. You think of the legends as being around while a team grows around them. It seems more natural that way. A champion seems more invested that way, rather than joining someone else's party.

I'm not sure that matters any more. Paul is already playing for his fifth team. He goes down as the first superstar journeyman. He won't be the last.

He is 36 years old, and this is probably his last real shot to win a title on what will be seen as his team. Winning one on LeBron's team is not the ideal, but when you've played a long career with less than the competition, it's only natural to want to see what would happen if you changed sides.

Paul hasn't chased the superteam for 16 years, instead working tirelessly, patiently, with class and drive. He brought this Phoenix team together. Still, in his career he has lost three series after taking a 2-0 lead.

There have always been reasons. At some point, you do have to prove it. Paul was excellent in Games 1 and 2 of this series, then had an inexplicable turnover late in Game 4 and a crushing mistake with a foul in the final seconds of Game 5.

Paul's wrist hurts; he wears a compression sleeve on his leg, maybe something with his hamstring. Those aren't temporary excuses. That's called being 36, with 16 years running NBA offenses on your body.

He still has something to prove.

If you want to feel sorry for him, please don't. Give the man the respect to let his legacy live or die based on his fight. If he never wins a title, then he can go down as Patrick Ewing or Charles Barkley. There is nothing wrong with that.

No pity here. No charity case.

This is Paul's chance to figure it out. That's what champions do.

Fearless: Monty Williams and Chris Paul are why believers in Christ should watch the NBA Finals



You should be watching the NBA Finals.

Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams is a disciple of Jesus Christ. Phoenix's most important player, point guard Chris Paul, is a believer as well.

The NBA has let us down. Its full-on embrace of the Marxist-fueled Black Lives Matter movement in the aftermath of George Floyd's death soured my passion for professional basketball. I skipped last year's playoffs and never watched a full regular-season game this season.

I watched the first round of this year's playoffs solely because I wanted to see LeBron James lose. Once that happened, I started watching all of the games.

These playoffs have been joyful and super exciting. For the most part, the TV commercials don't annoy me.

But the real reason to watch is that God placed a messenger inside the NBA's secular madness. Monty Williams might be the most important man in sports. The 49-year-old former Notre Dame and NBA player is the leader and example America needs.

Last night, Monty's squad took a commanding 2-0 lead in its best-of-seven series against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Suns are just two victories away from giving Phoenix its first NBA title and expanding Williams' platform to expound on the power of Jesus' gospel.

Do you know the Monty Williams story? It belongs in a new Bible.

Five years ago, a 52-year-old white woman high on meth drove her car head-first into the car driven by Williams' wife, Ingrid. Three of Williams' five children were also in the car. The white woman died at the scene of the accident. Ingrid Williams died a day later. Williams' children survived.

A week later, Monty Williams stood at his wife's funeral and delivered the most amazing seven-minute eulogy and testimony I've ever heard. He started with scripture.

Psalms 113:1, "Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity."

Psalms 73:1, "God is good."

John 4:16, "God is love."

He then shared the story of the doctor who told him, as an 18-year-old freshman at Notre Dame, that if he continued to play basketball, he would die because of a heart condition. His wife, then his girlfriend, Ingrid, told him, "Jesus can heal your heart."

Williams played in the NBA for a decade.

He closed his wife's funeral by asking his family and friends to pray for the family of the driver who killed his wife.

"Now, I'm gonna close with this, and I think it's the most important thing that we need to understand," Williams began. "Everybody's praying for me and my family, which is right. But let us not forget that there were two people in this situation. And that family needs prayer as well. And we have no ill will toward that family.

"In my house, we have a sign that says, 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.' We cannot serve the Lord if we don't have a heart of forgiveness.

"That family didn't wake up wanting to hurt my wife. Life is hard. It is very hard. And that was tough, but we hold no ill will toward the Donaldson family, and we as a group, brothers united in unity, should be praying for that family, because they grieve as well. So let's not lose sight of what's important.

"God will work this out. My wife is in heaven. God loves us. God is love. And when we walk away from this place today, let's celebrate because my wife is where we all need to be. And I'm envious of that."

You should be watching the NBA Finals. You should be telling your children the story of Monty Williams. There are still great lessons we can learn from sports. There are still role models in the world of sports. Sports still have the power to unify us. Sports can still show us the way.

When the Suns won the Western Conference Finals two weeks ago, Williams explained to an ESPN interviewer the foundation of his success as a coach.

"I expressed from the time I got the job in Phoenix and to every new player that comes to our program, the essence of my coaching is to serve," Williams said. "As a believer in Christ, that's what I'm here for. And I tell them all the time, if I get on you, I'm not calling you out, I'm calling you up."

It's not just Williams. The same night, Phoenix star Chris Paul shared with ESPN that he's written the title of a gospel song on his shoe for the past year. It's a song by the group Mary Mary. It's called "Can't Give Up Now."

This Phoenix team is special. It's not a coincidence that they're playing the Bucks in the Finals. Milwaukee is the team that walked out of a game last year and shut down the "bubble" in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The players on the Bucks are not bad guys. They're young, emotional, and obsessed with social media. They're no different from most young people. They're not based in a higher understanding of the world.

They don't have someone like Monty Williams showing them the light and the way.

Maybe the Bucks will climb out of this 0-2 hole and win the NBA title. Who knows? I can't predict the future. But I'm going to enjoy these games, pray that Williams and Paul win it all, and hope that their message is shared and understood.

You should join me.

Fearless: ESPN’s Rachel Nichols-Maria Taylor feud diminishes NBA star Chris Paul’s magical moment



Don't be confused about the Rachel Nichols-Maria Taylor battle. This is clear as daylight. Nichols was caught in a private moment saying that Taylor was, basically, a diversity hire when she replaced Nichols on ESPN's NBA coverage. So yes, Taylor's credentials were questioned. But there are no innocent victims here.

This is pure deathsport.

Taylor and Nichols are two tough women using dirty tricks, pettiness, gossip, and back-stabbing to fight out this political battle for personal goals. And if you think Taylor had nothing to do with leaking the Nichols tape that supposedly victimizes her, well, then you need to catch up.

But you know, I'm already wrong about one thing. I said there are no victims. There is one: Chris Paul.

Nichols' and Taylor's blood-curdling fight, their co-workers' panic in the storm, ESPN management's wishy-washiness, and the media's cowardice — dropping Woj bombs in their shorts — are all balling up to hijack the NBA Finals from Paul, who deserves the moment.

It was stolen from him time and again over the past 10 years. So let's just forget about the Real Housewives of ESPN for a minute. Turn away from the crash on the ESPN highway and check out Paul. Give him his moment.

Paul had 32 points and nine assists for Phoenix Tuesday night in the Suns' 118-105 victory over Milwaukee in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. That came after he scored 41 on the Los Angeles Clippers to clinch a spot in the finals.

He is 36 years old, playing on his fifth team. And this is his first NBA Finals. He is basically a journeyman star, if there can be such a thing, without a championship.

We like to compare legacies, so imagine what Paul's would be if former NBA commissioner David Stern hadn't used his veto power in 2011. That's when the New Orleans Hornets tried to trade Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he would've been teammates with Kobe Bryant. Stern nixed the deal.

Imagine if Paul had spent several years as Bryant's wingman, he could've gone down as the second greatest point guard in NBA history, after Magic Johnson.

But Stern stepped in and put a stop to that trade — according to The New York Times — when several other team owners complained that the Lakers would be too good.

How many championships would Paul have won? What would we be seeing today, instead of a seemingly good guy and team player who is still searching for the greatness label that comes with winning a title?

Do you know what Paul did when Stern nixed the deal? He called an agent and looked for advice on how to plot against Stern. No, wait, that's Nichols' playbook. No, he sat on incriminating evidence, and then went public with it when … oops, no, that's Taylor.

Unless I missed it, Paul didn't pitch a fit or go public or start conniving. It appears that Paul handled adversity with class when he was denied something he wanted. He was denied something. He bounced around to several teams, looking for that chance at a title.

And now, in his first year with the Suns, it is within reach.

Paul's reaction to Stern's heavy hand is testament to his talent, confidence, and will to succeed.

Meanwhile, ESPN removed Nichols from her sideline reporting gig during the NBA Finals. Her daily NBA show "The Jump'' was inexplicably canceled for the day.

Although it's a bit hard to pin down exactly what Nichols did terribly wrong here, beyond gossip with a friend and expose her unapproved wrongthink.

On the call with LeBron James adviser Adam Mendelsohn, Nichols said that Taylor's race — she's black — played into her replacing Nichols on the show "NBA Countdown.'' Nichols called ESPN diversity hiring "crappy'' and said that if they wanted to fix that, they shouldn't do it in a way that costs her. If they hurt others? Presumably that would be OK.

Nichols was looking for advice on how to protect her space.

ESPN has known about this for a year and done very little other than, apparently, giving in to Taylor's wishes to not have Nichols live on her show. Instead, Nichols' appearances are recorded in advance so that she and Taylor don't interact.

So, exactly what is ESPN's stance? The company didn't take one until after Nichols' story went public.

Meanwhile, Taylor is trying to get a new contract with ESPN. Her current one runs out this month. She reportedly was offered $5 million, but she turned it down, wanting Stephen A. Smith-level money, meaning roughly $8 million. And while I don't know for sure that she leaked that tape, it sure seems probable, as it will now be hard to dump her.

You have to wonder: If any of these people — Nichols, Taylor, ESPN management — had Paul's level of talent, confidence, and will to succeed, would this version of Real Housewives of ESPN have a healthier storyline?

Chris Paul is the real story here. He's had injuries, missed games because of COVID, and yet he's on the brink of his greatest achievement.

"It's been a lot,'' he said. "I'm telling you.''

Here's hoping he gets what he deserves. In fact, here's hoping everyone gets what they deserve.