Austin Rivers labels Chris Paul party snub on-brand with Clippers culture

As reports on the fallout among Los Angeles Clippers players and veteran guard Chris Paul continue, one former teammate, Austin Rivers, wasn’t surprised to hear that only a few players showed up to a Halloween party. Paul reportedly hosted the party to bring teammates closer together, to no avail. 

Rivers, who played with Paul on the Clippers from 2015 until Paul’s departure in 2017, reacted to the report, per his podcast, Off Guard with Austin Rivers.

“It sounds on par, you know, they said Brad Beal and only a couple of other guys showed up. Like, it sounds about right,” Rivers said. “Kawhi ain’t showing up.”

For Rivers, the Clippers should have taken the opportunity to follow Paul’s lead.

“There’s zero culture there. He tried to set it and force it in his last year, and they didn’t want it,” Rivers said. “And they didn’t accept it, and they got him out of there. It’s the bottom line. And then it just rubs people the wrong way with his success and history there as a Clipper. It is what it is.”

Rivers believes the fact that the Clippers and Paul couldn’t make things work this season is a testament to a lack of continuity in Los Angeles.

“It’s Chris, it’s Chris Paul. You know what I mean? It’s like what? No one showed up to Chris’s thing,” Rivers said. “It’s strange to me, but it doesn’t surprise me. There isn’t a culture there.”

The Clippers lost 122-101 to the Thunder on Thursday, falling to 6-21 and tying the Sacramento Kings for the second-worst record in the Western Conference standings.

How Chris Paul’s leadership efforts fell flat with Clippers

Clippers veteran Kawhi Leonard says Chris Paul’s departure surprised him, but didn’t change the future Hall of Fame guard’s fate, as he awaits the next chapter in his NBA career. While Austin Rivers assumed Leonard most likely didn’t attend Paul’s Halloween party, most of the Clippers’ players didn’t either.

Paul’s party wasn’t a hit with his new Clippers teammates, according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne.

“It was the kind of thing Paul would routinely do on other teams. But the Clippers’ locker room, full of veteran players and coaches, is not particularly active, even after wins, sources said. So Paul’s attempt to encourage dialogue fell flat,” Shelburne wrote.

“A few nights later, after a win over New Orleans, Paul and his wife hosted a Halloween party for players and staffers in a club at the Intuit Dome. It was meant as a culture-building exercise, and afterward Frank and others commended Paul for doing it, despite only a handful of players attending, sources said. Then the Clippers didn’t win a game for almost two weeks,” Shelburne concluded.

Some considered this the beginning of the end for Paul and the Clippers, as the writing was on the wall with a 5-16 record before the future Hall of Fame guard was sent home.

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