Wemby, young Spurs step into Chris Paul’s classroom

Brooklyn Nets forward Cam Johnson will never forget the time he saw Chris Paul read someone’s mind.

The telepathy occurred a couple of months into Johnson’s third NBA season, years after Paul, his teammate with the Phoenix Suns, had recovered from a supposed downswing to regain first-class status in the point-guard hierarchy. His Suns were in a close game against the Portland Trail Blazers and hoping to hamper one of the game’s sharpest shooters, Damian Lillard.

As Lillard, an eight-time All-Star, initiated the play, Paul stepped up to him. Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic arrived to set a screen. Once Lillard maneuvered to his right, Paul anticipated the rest. He might have been the only one in the building who knew that a 30-point scorer like Lillard would not look at the rim.

Lillard attempted to bounce a pass to Nurkic, but Paul’s left hand was in the way. He deflected the ball, dived to Nurkic’s feet, recovered the ball, and then called a timeout.

As Paul strutted back to the Suns bench, he repeated the same phrase.

“You got to watch,” he shouted, Johnson recalled. “That’s why you got to watch.”

Paul had studied enough to notice a trend with Lillard. When he veered to his right on a pick-and-roll, he wanted to flip a bounce pass, not shoot. But this time, a hand beat him there.

This is the Paul way: watch so much basketball that what is coming next is not a guess. He disagrees with analysts who condescend about “gambling” on defense, the ones who evaluate all jumps of passing lanes as equal. He believes he should have won a defensive player of the year award at some point during a 20-year career that has included a record six steals titles and nine All-Defense appearances.

Some defenders play blackjack, Paul argues. He plays poker.

“We play too many games not to have tendencies,” said Paul, now the top point guard for the San Antonio Spurs.

It’s Paul’s mission to uncover them all — and not just for himself.

The defining characteristic of Paul’s legacy will be his basketball IQ. Especially during the second act of his career, Paul, 39, has become as valuable for imparting his knowledge, one of the reasons the youth-laden Spurs, led by the second-year center Victor Wembanyama, signed him this summer.

“He’s basically been coaching along with playing, very honestly,” coach Gregg Popovich said.

This is not new.

“When I see young guys who get this opportunity, I say not to throw it away, because I lived it, right?” Paul said. “Every guy is so excited when they get here to the league, most guys, majority of guys, because we’re .00000001% of people that have this opportunity, right? So just trying to tell them the things that I’ve learned.”

When he played for the Golden State Warriors, Paul taught Moses Moody how to pick up referee patterns.

It was not new in his previous stop, with the Suns, when he preached to his fellow point guard Cameron Payne about how to run a team.

Paul fixates on the micro. Those sneaky moves that only sticklers could come up with. The ones that leave him sprawled on the court in front of giants like Nurkic. He teaches those, too.

In Phoenix, he helped mold the eventual All-Defense wing Mikal Bridges, who is now better at guarding in transition because of Paul’s advice.

If Paul can catch up to an opponent racing the other way on a fast break, he will tap on one side of the dribbler’s body, making him believe that is where Paul is positioned. Once the player crosses over, Paul steals it.

“Like, that’s crazy,” Bridges said. “How do you even think of that while you’re in the game chasing somebody down? It’s just ridiculous.”

Paul’s tutelage has already begun in San Antonio. He recently warned rookie guard Stephon Castle about the dangers of sartorial sloppiness. If Castle checked in off the bench with his jersey untucked, he could be called for a delay of game, Paul told him, a niche rule Paul has exploited against opponents in the past.

This season, Paul has the opportunity to influence a roster featuring the reigning rookie of the year, Wembanyama. Eight players 25 or younger — including Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson, Jeremy Sochan and Tre Jones — could receive rotation minutes.

Despite Wembanyama’s rookie magic, the Spurs won only 22 games in 2023-24, the result of experimentation and weakness at point guard.

The Spurs believe that Paul, who came off the bench for Golden State a season ago, fills that role, even if he is no longer in his prime, while also offering veteran leadership and guidance.

Paul says he tries to watch every NBA game on the docket during nights his team does not play. When he is on the road, he settles for a few games at a time, throwing a nationally televised one on the TV with another on his iPad.

Paul does not write down notes but, rather, files away the information in his brain.

A continual feed of basketball means Paul does not feel the need to load up on scouting heading into games. Before facing an opponent, he will log onto Second Spectrum, a wide-ranging database with film and stats, to study every shot his upcoming assignment has taken over the previous five games.

“If you’re playing against a guy who don’t shoot it a lot and all this stuff, but if you look at his last five games, and he’s 8 for 12 from 3 or whatnot, that’s going to let you know the first time they drive and kick to him, he’s going to let it fly,” Paul said.

Paul cannot remember thinking about the sport in another way.

He credits a childhood AAU coach, Andy Poplin, for opening his mind. When Paul was 11, his team used complex offensive and defensive schemes. One play they ran routinely was called “Utah,” a high pick-and-roll named after the Jazz’s John Stockton-Karl Malone connection.

“It’s almost like a kid learning how to play chess when they’re 4, 5 years old,” Paul said.

Paul became a grand master.

“Even at that time, he was a coach on the floor,” Poplin said. “He would get people in the right places and get people in their spots, be slightly irritated when they didn’t get to their spots. He was just a competitor.”

Now, as a grizzled veteran, Paul relies on structure to keep his edge. Three hours before a game, he is on the court alone. He finds shooting around by himself therapeutic. “Like when I was a kid,” he said.

And he is a vegan now. His food intake is regimented, one of the reasons he has lasted for two decades in the NBA and maintained All-Star status into his late 30s.

“Everything is efficient,” Johnson said.

That’s efficiency in food, efficiency in work, efficiency on the court, efficiency in life.

One player in particular who has benefited from Paul’s guidance is Payne, his teammate on the Suns. Payne’s first season alongside Paul, one that helped the Suns to the NBA Finals, was his best, and not by coincidence. With his NBA career on life support less than a year before joining Phoenix, Payne understood the best way to stick in the league was to soak up whatever information Paul was willing to share.

This was a Ph.D. in being a PG.

The first lesson Paul taught Payne was how to “take over the huddle,” as Payne puts it. When the Suns returned to the bench during a timeout, it was the point guard’s job to tell each of his teammates what he saw before the coach spoke.

“Sometimes as young guys, you don’t want to hear that, but he has great knowledge, so you pay attention,” Payne said of Paul.

As Payne improved, he asked more questions. He recognized that when Paul ventured around pick-and-rolls on offense, a passing lane to his screener always seemed to be open. How, he wondered?

“Score yourself,” Paul told Payne. “That’s how it opens up.” Once you make the defense guard the threat of a bucket, the pass becomes easier.

Paul would not yell at Payne for mistakes, but instead took the tone of a disappointed older sibling.

Paul knew that Payne already understood what he did wrong. “Come on, Cam. Come on, man. Cam, come on,” Payne recalled Paul saying, mimicking the tenor of the elder statesman.

Now, Paul can speak the same way to Wembanyama and to Castle, to Vassell and to Jones. The Spurs have a starting point guard to leave vegan breadcrumbs for anyone behind him.

“There has been a mentorship dynamic with everybody because Chris is Chris,” Popovich said. “His experience and his intelligence, as we know, is off the charts.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.