iron man chris paul in stockton place, does he win a ring?

[falcolombardi]

basically 2006 chris paul joins the 85 jazz in stockton place and plays out his career there

for the sake of discussion lets pretend he has iron man health after a injury that zaps his athletism (his real life hornets injury happens in 89 here, he is perfectly healthy afterwards) so he still develops his game the same way

[FuShengTHEGreat]

Hard to say....but one thing I know for sure. Era or no era. CP3 doesn't get manhandled or played even in the playoffs by PGs he was supposed to be much better than like what happened to Stockton in some years the Jazz were eliminated.

Terry Porter ran circles around him in the 92 WCF. That was a epic h2h beat down on the level of Hakeem vs Robinson in 95 WCF....but imho is almost never talked about.

Stockton was also played to a stalemate by career role player Kenny Smith in b2b playoff years. The same Smith that absolutely got shredded by KJ in the same playoff years.

I just can't see CP3 even at this age getting run ragged like that vs guys of that calibre. Probably the only PG CP3 couldn't contain/slow in his entire playoff career was peak athletic Westbrook in the 2014 OKC/LA series and there's no shame in that vs that version of Westbrook. CP3 still had a very efficient/good series himself and was by far the Clips' best player.

[coastalmarker99]

I would say he wins a ring in 1998.


CP3 would be a massive upgrade on the offensive and defensive end for the Jazz in that series compared to Stockton who was utterly terrible outside of game 1.

[dygaction]

When you put iron man on CP3 in the same sentence with Stockton, it is like calling scoring machine AI in front of Jordan.

[penbeast0]

If you assume that Chris Paul never has a bad series then these comments make sense. As a human being, of course he is up and down. His overall game in the playoffs is pretty comparable to Stockton though with less turnovers, more points. If he is as healthy as Stockton and can work together with Karl Malone (who could be nasty) without trouble for as many years, he's one of the few pass first PGs that would actually be an upgrade. Enough of one to get a ring with Malone and the collection of SFs and one dimensional centers that Stockton played with over the year? Possible but far from certain.

[RCM88x]

I think there is a very good chance they can pull it off in 97, 98 or even 94 (18, 19, 15 CP3 seasons). In theory he makes them better assuming equal health to Stockton (or even slightly worse).