“Chris Paul Is Not Getting Traded. He Will Be On The Team Next Season” - Daryl Morey Last Month While His Pants Were Clearly On Fire

Hey maybe you’ve heard but we have another monster transaction in our hands. We hear so much about Miami, and then this morning Windy went on TV and said the Rockets were trying to get involved but we always here the Rockets are involved in every star free agent and it’s mostly hot air. Basically it’s them and the Celtics that are always tied to things, the only difference being Morey actually did something and pulled it off. I couldn’t help but think back to just a few weeks ago when reports came out about how James Harden and Chris Paul hated each other line poison and Paul wanted out. The Rockets and Daryl Morey were quick to play the #FakeNews angle despite there being smoke everywhere you looked. Rockets fans blamed the media for creating this narrative that simply didn’t exist, while deep down they probably knew it was true.

Now is it possible that when Morey said all that he had no idea that OKC was going to blow it all up and completely rebuild? Sure. But as we know he’s an opportunist who isn’t afraid to put his nuts on the table so when the opportunity presented itself to upgrade his team he pulled the trigger. Who cares what he said before right? This tells us that one way or another Morey was lying. Whether it was that he believed Chris Paul still had elite years left in the tank and was committed to winning with him on the roster, or he was lying this whole time and CP3 really was available. Can’t have it both ways.

This is why I will never get mad at players for doing everything they can to obtain as much control over their careers as possible. Let’s say Paul really didn’t want to get traded, clearly that didn’t matter. All that bullshit about adding to him and Harden, that they were the cornerstones means jack shit. Personally I think this tells us that he did want out and Morey was just trying to save as much leverage as possible in a potential deal, and once he found a return that he deemed acceptable he pulled the trigger. Now what are the chances that Paul told Morey he wanted to go to OKC? I’m going to go with maybe 2%. Who knows if the Thunder keep him, that team is NOT what Paul has to be looking for at this stage of his career, but unless he gets bought out what happens? Who else is going to take on that contract? We saw a similar situation with Melo and OKC, but I can’t imagine Paul is thrilled about what just happened to him.

It’s pretty crazy that we were all excited for the hype this summer and it’s actually coming through. I feel like that never happens. This all just goes to show that you can never, ever, ever fully trust what the GM of your favorite team tells you. Maybe we should have known that this was coming when Morey was so adamant denying all those reports last month. Classic sign of a guy who knows it’s the truth and look what happened.