Chris Paul to Sign with San Antonio Spurs

After becoming a free agent Sunday, veteran former All-Star point guard Chris Paul has reached an agreement to sign with the San Antonio Spurs.

When Sunday began, Chris Paul was a member of the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors had until the afternoon Sunday to keep Paul on the roster for next season with a $30 million salary, or, they could waive him, and allow him to become an unrestricted free agent.

The Warriors chose the latter option and waived Paul, allowing him to become a free agent for almost 3 hours, before the San Antonio Spurs quickly came to an agreement with him.

The news was broken by Chris Haynes of TNT, and the salary information was provided by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. Paul has agreed to sign a one year, $11 plus million deal to play for the Spurs.

Haynes reported Paul spoke with Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich and he was sold on the Spurs’ culture and at the opportunity to help Victor Wembanayama in year two of his career.

Despite being 39 next season, Paul also wants to show he can still be a good point guard in the league, according to Haynes.

Let’s go through some early questions about Paul joining the Spurs.

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Who was Paul this season on the Dubs?

At 6’0”, Paul mainly came off the bench for Golden State, logging most of his minutes at the point, but he also played some minutes at the 2.

Here were Paul’s base stats:

Here was Paul’s shooting breakdown:

Back on April 21, here’s what I wrote about Paul on the offensive end last season:

Paul was still efficient for his position in the mid-range and floater range. The fact that he only took 14 layup attempts shows that at this point in his career, he’s not going to be putting much pressure on the rim.

He shot 41% on arc 3s, but from the corners, he struggled. Like many of the current Spurs players, Paul would be left wide open by the defense, so they could double Victor Wembanyama, with 49% of Paul’s 3s this past season being attempted wide open.

In crunch time, Paul played in 28 games and while he wouldn’t help much in scoring during that time, he would help in moving the ball and not turning it over. He tallied 11 assists to just 1 turnover in his crunch time minutes this season.

When looking at his drives data, Paul mainly passed the ball on drives before taking shots, but when he did shoot, he shot over 50% on drives. He doesn’t really get to the foul line much anymore, and that’s an area on the floor where the Spurs were bottom-10 this past season.

On offense, Paul would help the Spurs by taking care of the basketball, providing some shooting in-between the floater and mid-range, and by being a veteran player who can get the Spurs into their sets and find Wemby in different locations on the floor.

Here’s what I wrote about Paul defensively from that article:

Defensively, compared to other Spurs guards and wings, Paul would stand out in deflections, steals, and defensive rebounds in per 36 minutes data.

On defense, Paul would help the Spurs in deflections and steals, which leads to an area where the Spurs struggled, getting opponents to turn over the basketball.

While Paul may still get targeted against bigger wings and guards from time to time defensively, he now has the best shot blocking big in the game behind him for those help blocks.

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How much cap space do the Spurs still have left?

There’s two paths the Spurs can take to get Paul the reported $11 plus million salary he agreed to:

A) The over-the-cap route: In this scenario, the Spurs stay as a team over the salary cap, which gives them access to the $12.8 million non-tax mid-level exception. Paul’s $11 million salary can come out of that exception, and that would still give the Spurs the ability to use the $4.6 million bi-annual exception on another free agent, or to trade for a player.

B) The cap space route: The Spurs could waive Devonte’ Graham, who has a partially guaranteed salary with a $2.8 million cap hit, and open up to $18.2 million in cap space, to pay Paul the $11 million, out of that amount. The Spurs would still have $7 million in cap space to spend, and also, the room exception of $7.9 million.

We’ll have a better idea of how the Spurs are operating in the coming days if they agree to sign more free agents, or renounce cap holds on current free agents.

Paul’s one year deal also keeps the Spurs’ cap sheet flexible for next offseason.

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What will the Spurs’ lineups look like?

With Paul, the Spurs can look at a few different lineups:

Start Paul and Castle: This lineup would feature a starting five of Paul, Devin Vassell, Stephon Castle, Jeremy Sochan, and Wemby

• The Pros: With Paul’s steal and deflection ability, plus Castle, Sochan, and Wemby’s versatile defensive skill sets, the Spurs could anchor a really good defense with this group. Paul and Castle could also share some of the ball handling duties to get the ball to Wemby.

• The Cons: Lack of spacing from outside. Defenses would leave Paul, Castle, and Sochan open on a good chunk of their 3s, leaving little space for Wemby to operate, while Devin Vassell would have more attention from the outside, being the sole high volume 3-point shooter in the starting five.

Start Paul, have Castle come off the bench: This lineup would feature a starting five of Paul, Vassell, Julian Champagnie (or if the Spurs sign a starting wing), Sochan, and Wemby.