Chris Paul is just a few months shy of celebrating his 40th birthday, and he’s the second-oldest active player in the NBA, trailing only longtime friend LeBron James, who will reach the big 4-0 later this month. Now in his 20th season, Paul has outlasted everyone from his 2005 NBA Draft class, and by a significant margin, as the others all retired at least three years ago. Naturally, given his age, and the number of years under his belt, retirement is a popular topic regarding Paul, and it’s a topic he’s not shying away from.
“Maybe a year or two, I’m still trying to feel it out,” Paul revealed to Parker. “I think at this point, the hardest part is—I love this, practice today and all that. I love hooping, I love all of that. The hardest part is when I get home, and I gotta watch my kids games on an iPad. That’s the tug-of-war right now.”
And he’s doing just that on a young Spurs team in which 12 of his 14 teammates are 25 or younger, and much closer in age to Paul’s 15-year-old son, Chris Jr., than Chris Sr. However, Paul isn’t just a babysitter on one of the NBA’s youngest teams, as he’s a contributor as well. While his stats are down from his All-NBA days, his numbers are up across the board from last year with Golden State. He also has helped accelerate the learning curve of reigning Rookie of the Year, Victor Wembanyama, and his leadership has been needed with head coach Gregg Popovich out indefinitely following a stroke.
Paul also mentioned the ability to compete was a driving factor in him joining the Spurs, and the team has been surprisingly competitive. It sits at 12–12 entering play Friday, while the Spurs had just a 4–20 record at this point last season and didn’t collect their 12th victory until Feb. 29.
The 12-time All-Star, and 11-time All-NBA selection, has logged nine double-doubles this season, trailing just Trae Young (18), James Harden (12) and Cade Cunningham (12) amongst point guards. In his last game, he also made a bit of history as he passed Jason Kidd for the second-most assists in NBA history. He’s also just 37 steals away from passing Kidd for the second-most steals in league history.
John Stockton tops all players in both assists and steals, but if Paul has aspirations to surpass Stockton in either category, his goal of playing “maybe a year or two” would have to be modified to “maybe another four or five years” due to the distance that the Utah Jazz legend set between himself and everyone else.
Perhaps in four or five years, Paul will still be involved with the game of basketball but in a different way. Since he threw out his retirement timeline, the next natural question is what he will do once he’s done playing, and Paul has a career path in mind.
“I always said I wasn’t going to coach, but I’m open to a whole bunch of things now,” Paul said. “I definitely know I don’t want to do it right off the bat whenever I finish, because I definitely want to be present for the kids.”
The Spurs are Paul’s seventh NBA team, which is quite a lot for a first-ballot Hall of Famer, who teams would seemingly want for the long-term. He’s switched teams so often that Paul even poked fun at himself for trading jerseys in a State Farm commercial. But he doesn’t see that as a negative, but rather a plus that he can take with him with his other ambition in retirement.
“I definitely want to be in ownership,” said Paul. “If I do get team ownership, or have a team, I’ve learned to much from all of these different places that I would want to put into a team.”
