Thanks to Chris Paul, the Oklahoma City Thunder have been one of the most shocking stories of the 2019-20 NBA season. For his efforts, the star guard received early MVP votes.
Media men Justin Termine, Frank Isola, and Amin Elhassan revealed that they placed Paul in the MVP ballot. Isola and Elhassan put Paul fifth on their ballot, while Termine placed him third. According to Isola, Paul helped the Thunder surpass all the expectations, which certainly deserves some recognition.
“I think Chris Paul is having an incredible season. I thought he’s done an unbelievable job — maybe because the expectations were so low that he was gonna be miserable and all this other stuff, they’ve actually had a better season thus far than the Houston Rockets,” Isola said of the Thunder star on Siriux XM Radio, as transcribed by Logan Newman of USA Today.
“So I like Chris Paul at five. I really respect and appreciate the year that he’s had.”
Elhassan noted that Paul is a “guy with bad PR,” noting that this might have affected his popularity. But considering everything else, Paul is one hell of a basketball player who has made his young teammates better.
The Thunder are already set for the playoffs despite initial expectations that they were in a rebuild mode after trading both Russell Westbrook and Paul George in the past offseason.
Several media members either had LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks in first or second on their MVP ballots. So from the looks of it, Paul will not receive the MVP trophy. Nonetheless, it might be enough for Paul to know that he has earned the respect of the NBA community once and for all.
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