The Clippers Checked Out Early From Chris Paul’s Retirement Tour

The Los Angeles Clippers and point guard Chris Paul are splitting up. The team is awful. They've lost five straight and eight of nine, and their last three wins—they've only got five total, in 21 games—have come against the Hornets, who are crud; the Mavericks, who are crud; and the Pelicans, who make crud look like a banana split. Paul, who last month leaked his impending retirement, presumably so that he could enjoy a months-long farewell tour, was playing about 14 minutes a game for the Clippers as a reserve. Now a free agent, Paul can offer five months of whatever is left of his vitality to anyone in the market for a rapidly declining middle-aged rotation guard who doesn't like to shoot and who has the mobility and defensive utility of a Roomba.

Usually when an ancient but honored veteran leaves a collapsing team midseason, it is so that he can chase a ring elsewhere, and the course is chosen by mutual consent. That appears not to have been the case with Paul and the Clippers: Paul, in a social media dispatch posted late Tuesday night, described being abruptly "sent home" by the team, which is presently in Atlanta to face the Hawks. Team president Lawrence Frank later told ESPN that while "no one is blaming" Paul for the Clippers playing like total shit, he has nevertheless decided to unceremoniously jettison the best player in franchise history. "We are parting ways with Chris and he will no longer be with the team," Frank said in a text, reported by ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk. "We will work with him on the next step of his career."