Brooklyn Nets: Evaluating Houston Rockets fire sale possibilities

Chris Paul

Chris Paul, the darling of the analytics community, is 34 years old now and is 50 career games away from the 1,000 mark for his career, a line of demarkation that almost universally signals a steep decline in productivity.

Despite his individual brilliance, Paul has just one conference finals appearance to show for his 13 seasons and he’s missed 69 games over the last three seasons with injury issues.

Throw in the fact he’s had hamstring issues throughout his career and that becomes a risky target even before considering the money.

Oh, yes. The money.

Paul played in 58 games this season for the Rockets, averaging a career-low of 15.6 points per game, while his 8.2 assists per game was the third-lowest mark of his career.

He shot a career-worst 41.9 percent overall, hit just 35.8 percent on 6.1 3-point attempts per game (his lowest since 2012-13) and hit 86.2 percent from the line — a good number, but below his career mark of 86.8 percent.

In the playoffs, Paul averaged 17.0 points and 5.5 assists per game on 44.6 percent shooting overall and just 27 percent accuracy on 5.7 deep tries a night.

And for that falling production, Paul will be owed $124.08 million over the next three seasons, escalating from $38.51 million next season to $41.36 million in 2020-21 and $44.21 million in 2021-22, when he will be 36.

CP3 is an all-time great, but at his age and salary cap number, he’s also a hard pass.