Inside Chris Paul’s Clippers departure, Lawrence Frank’s decision to send the future Hall-of-Famer home

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Inside Chris Paul’s Clippers departure, Lawrence Frank’s decision to send the future Hall-of-Famer home

Tomer Azarly, ClutchPoints · ClutchPoints

Wed, Dec 3, 2025 ·

13 min read

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The post Inside Chris Paul's Clippers departure, Lawrence Frank's decision to send the future Hall-of-Famer home appeared first on ClutchPoints .

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles Clippers made the decision to part ways with Chris Paul early Wednesday morning ahead of the team's game against the Atlanta Hawks. President of Basketball Operations called the decision to send Paul home, "difficult," adding that, "it wasn't the working out the way that I had planned."

"Essentially, it just wasn't the working out the way that I had planned, the way we had planned," Frank said during a teleconference call with media on Wednesday morning. "And it's unfortunate. You don't take decisions like this lightly at all, especially, you know, a guy that's meant so much to the league and so much to our organization. But we just felt it was the it was the right decision to make. And unfortunately, it was it was a really, really hard decision to make, but I think the right one for the team and organization."

The Clippers put out a statement early Wednesday morning, announcing that they're parting ways with Chris Paul and sending him home in the middle of the team's road trip. The statement came after Paul posted an Instagram story at about 2:40AM EST with the words, "Just found out I'm being sent home."

To start his press conference, Lawrence Frank doubled down in saying the team was not scapegoating Paul for the team's 5-16 start to the 2025-26 season.

"I want to reiterate my statement: Chris Paul had a legendary career and is a legendary Clipper," Frank said. "We did not make this move because of our underperformance. He had nothing to do with that. I take full responsibility for our record. We are not scapegoating Chris Paul. We have many issues and we're going to address each issue for our underperformance. But I do want to make it clear. We have great respect for Chris, for the career that he's had, and for his impact on the organization, what he did to help transform the franchise, and we're not blaming him for our underperformance. I take full responsibility for that.

"I also want to acknowledge our fans. I know how excited they were when we brought Chris back, and I can empathize with any anger or disappointment. I think we've all been severely disappointed with the start of the season. This is not the type of Clipper basketball we're used to seeing. And again, I own this, but we need to come and play with a whole lot more care, fight, resilience, resolve. We're capable of being better, and I'm confident we will be better."

When asked in numerous forms about the reason or incident that led to the Clippers parting ways with one of the franchise's best players, Frank wouldn't get into details.

"This decision had nothing to do with one incident or one meeting that did or did not happen. Some of our business, respectfully, have to keep in-house, but this didn't come down to just a one answer one meeting. It just wasn't the right fit.

"Because of the significance of what Chris means to the organization, these are very, very, very hard decisions. And ultimately, it's my job to do what's best for the organization, do what's best for the team, even if it's not even if it's not popular. And, again, I just want to re-emphasize, we're 5-16. I completely own that. I'm not putting that on Chris Paul at all. This is not a situation where I'm using Chris as a scapegoat for the job that I've done. And, you know, Chris's legacy with us stands. This situation just didn't work out at this time."

Mandatory Credit: Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Chris Paul's Nature Proved Too Much

Maybe there really wasn't just one incident to point to. But that's because tension between Chris Paul and the organization had been building over the early portions of this season.

Multiple league sources told ClutchPoints that Chris Paul and head coach Tyronn Lue hadn't spoken in weeks following what was a rocky start to the season. The Clippers started the season 3-2 before dropping three consecutive games against the Miami Heat , Oklahoma City Thunder , and Phoenix Suns .

Somewhere at that point — about three weeks ago now — according to sources familiar with the situation, Paul issued an apology to the team over his abrasive approach. Some of those in the room, however, weren't exactly sure what prompted the apology from Paul in the first place.

After that, Paul was a healthy scratch in five consecutive games for the Clippers. He returned to the lineup against the Philadelphia 76ers , on the second night of a back-to-back that the Clippers were already playing without Kawhi Leonard , Bradley Beal , Derrick Jones Jr. , or Jordan Miller . Paul played in eight straight games, including 15 minutes off the bench in his eventual final game against the Miami Heat on Sunday night.

"Basically late Sunday night, I made the decision that that we were going to part ways. I hit Chris up Monday morning in a text saying that I was going to fly to Atlanta and I needed to meet with him. So then I flew to Atlanta yesterday. Unfortunately, the team was delayed probably seven hours. So I hit Chris and just said, 'Look I need to meet with you. I want to do this face to face.' So this was lined up. I made the decision late Sunday night, contacted him Monday morning. It just so happened that we got in late and then because of the nature of the conversation — it was a long, long, long meeting. Chris and I had met throughout the early part of the season. This wasn't our our first meeting."

The meeting between Paul and Frank lasted over three hours, with Frank saying he owed it to the point guard to have that conversation in person.

"I mean, there's a ton of history between Chris, not just with the franchise, but with me," Frank explained. "I was an assistant coach when Chris played here, I had a ton of conversation with Chris leading up to this. I'm a very, very direct person, so going through all the different plausible things, Chris and I have had conversations throughout. So someone that you care about, someone that means a great deal to the organization, it's not going to be a five minute 'Moneyball' meeting. There's a lot there. And there are a lot of things to talk through and explain. And there's a lot of emotion.

"You're not putting a time on a meeting. We know this isn't going to end well in these situations. But I do think you owe each other the why we're here, and we know how we got here. There's disagreements, Chris sees it differently than than how I see it. And you talk through those things, you're not going to agree on those things. But it's just the relationships that you have. It was very, very important to me, despite it being bad news for Chris to do it in person, just to respect you show another person, and especially someone like that who who means so much to the organization."

Chris Paul joined the Clippers with the understanding that he may not be playing much, but also that his coarse leadership style would have to be reigned in. As the team's struggles worsened, sources said Paul's abrasive methods persisted to the point where he got into a heated argument with an assistant coach one time and was seen visibly frustrated during the team's flight to Miami this past weekend.

His aggressive and abrasive leadership style, despite the organization knowing what they were getting themselves into, was proving to be too much. Dealing with it while losing games in the same manner over and over again proved unbearable.

The Retirement "Announcement"

To start the season, Chris Paul would not rule out playing beyond this 2025-26 season. Over the last several weeks, however, Paul posted a video on social media that he had played his final game in his home state of North Carolina. Shortly after, reports from ESPN came out stating that Chris Paul announced this would be his final season in the NBA. But no official announcement was made by Paul himself, and he was not made available to speak to media for several weeks leading up to those reports, or "announcements."

Inside Intuit Dome, a few hours before the team's first home game against the Memphis Grizzlies following a seven-game road trip, the team played a tribute video for Chris Paul in honor of his final season during pregame rehearsals. But again, no such, "I am retiring," announcement was made by Paul himself.

About an hour later, during the open locker room portion of the pre-game availability, ClutchPoints approached Chris Paul to discuss the retirement rumors.

"Chris, there's a report of an announcement that this would be your final season, but I haven't seen or heard anything come from you."

"Ahh, uh huh," responded Paul, turning away from his locker beginning to walk away towards the team's showers. "Yeah."

"So is this your final season in the NBA?" I asked, confused at the initial response.

"Huh. Yeah, that's… Yeah. Yeah." Paul said walking away, turning his head just enough to make eye contact before disappearing around a corner.

But Paul wasn't answering the question. Instead, he was expressing both confusion and intrigue at those reports. You know, the same ones claiming he'll be retiring despite never actually announcing it himself.

Even after the game in which Paul played and the Clippers played a tribute video for him during one of the first timeouts of the game, he was not made available to media.

Paul would play in the Clippers' game Saturday against the Dallas Mavericks and boarded the plane with the team headed for Miami on Sunday, which is where he was seen visibly frustrated. Later that evening is when Frank says he made the decision that the team would part ways with the guard.

At about 4PM PST on Tuesday night, Chris Paul posted a highlight video commemorating his time with the Lob City Clippers. Hours later, at about 2:40AM EST, Paul followed it up with an Instagram story announcing that he was being sent home by the franchise.

This has all happened 43 days into the season, with no official announcement or statement from Paul, but a couple of social media videos signaling this would the end. Did Chris Paul even want to post those videos himself?

Parting ways with Chris Paul doesn't solve any of the Clippers problems, which right now revolve around them simply being a bad team that plays low IQ and low effort basketball.

"Right now we're playing bad basketball," Lawrence Frank said. "On both ends, we're a bad basketball team and we're capable of being a whole lot better than 5-16 and the improvement starts starts with me. I put together the roster, and you know, T-Lue is my partner. Tyronn Lue is a hell of a coach. He's going to continue to be the coach here for a long time. So we have to figure out collectively how we can get better within this roster. It's internal improvement, but we're we're a bad defensive team. We're a poor offensive team. Like any other team, we've had you know our share of injuries, but there's no excuse for where we're at."

Despite playing significant chunks of their first 21 games without Bradley Beal, Derrick Jones Jr., and Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers have kept most of their core intact from last season, when they were the third best defense in the league and held the fifth best net-rating.

This season, the Clippers have boasted the fourth worst defense in the league and the seventh worst net-rating.

They're also the third worst team in turnover percentage, giving the ball away on 16 percent of their possessions. And by the way, their 16.0 percent rate is mere percentage points ahead of only the Utah Jazz (16.1 percent) and the last place Los Angeles Lakers (16.2 percent).

Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

"To me, the issue is we have to get back to being a good basketball team because we've just played way too casual and careless," Frank continued. "The resolve and the resilience that have been kind of standards for us over for close to 14 years, we talk about that Clipper grit, we just have not seen it nearly enough with our group. And I know we're capable of being better and we have three All-Star caliber players. We have a bunch of proven starter rotation players. We definitely have enough to compete at a much higher level.

"I think the problems are widespread. There's not just one and we're going to tackle each problem at a time, but both on the defensive and offensive end and just collectively, the possession game, obviously the rebounding, the turnovers, our third quarters. I mean there's so much. I read you guys' postgame pieces. It's kind of the same answers right? Transition defense, turnovers, rebounding. Well, something has to give. I know what our group is capable of. I know collectively, both players and coaches, I have great faith that we're capable of doing better and so our improvement starts within, but yeah, there's there's much bigger issues than that like I said with Chris."

Owner Steve Ballmer has known winning his entire adult life, even before he came to own the LA Clippers a little over a decade ago. Now experiencing his first real losing season, Frank says Ballmer is on the same page with the front office with regards to frustration levels and the moves necessary to get out of his hole.

"Steve is in total agreement that Chris has nothing to do with us being 5-16. Steve has a ton of respect for Chris and what he means to the organization and on a separate note not tied to Chris, he's also very very disappointed and embarrassed about about our play, like we all are. And the frustrations that our fans feel? Well, Steve feels them too. We're extremely frustrated — even more frustrated — just because of the passion and love that that everyone puts into it. They're two separate issues.

"By my job is to make these decisions that you feel is in the best interest of the organization. Even even when they're going to be as potentially polarizing as this one, but we don't take it lightly. We have a great appreciation we in in our mind Chris's legacy is totally intact as as if not the greatest, one of the greatest, Clippers and and what he's meant."

Maybe those problems start being solved with Chris Paul's departure. Maybe they won't. Either way, the Clippers are stuck in a situation where they do not have control of their own first round pick for the next four years and have now further alienated a significant portion of their fanbase by getting rid of one of the franchise's best and favorite players.

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