Chris Paul has hinted at a desire to return to Los Angeles, but would he fit better on Lakers or Clippers?

Paul, entering his age-40 season, has lived away from his family for six years

Chris Paul has played in seven cities during his illustrious NBA career, but none have meant more to his legacy than Los Angeles. The team with which he has played the most combined regular-season and playoff games is there, the Clippers, but so is the team with which he infamously never suited up for. Paul was briefly traded to the Lakers in 2011 before commissioner David Stern infamously vetoed the trade for "basketball reasons."

Paul has played in five NBA cities since leaving Los Angeles in 2017, but his family hasn't followed him to all of them. As Paul revealed on the Pat McAfee Show last week, his family has remained behind in Los Angeles while he has played for the Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs. And now, as he enters his age-40 season (and his 21st in the NBA), it certainly seems as though he's hoping to finish his career closer to home.

"I talked to my family about it. My son just turned 16. My daughter's 12. The past six seasons I have lived without them. I've been away from them for the last six years. That's the conversation. I wanna be dad," Paul explained to McAfee. 

Fortunately, if Paul wants to return to Los Angeles to reunite with his kids, both the Lakers and Clippers would figure to be interested. Though Paul is obviously no longer a star, he was a perfectly productive role player a year ago. He started all 82 games for the Spurs, shot well, remained a stellar playmaker and held up about as well as could be expected for a player of his age. He's a backup at this stage in his career, but a useful one that either the Lakers or Clippers would be happy to have. The question here is on which team would he make more sense.

In immediate basketball terms, the answer is the Clippers. The Lakers are absolutely loaded with ball-handling between Luka Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, but backup point guard was a problem area for the Clippers a year ago. Kevin Porter Jr. was mostly bad before getting traded midseason. Bogdan Bogdanović was a mixed bag upon his acquisition from the Atlanta Hawks. The Clippers have a far clearer job available for him, and that probably matters here. Part of his motivation in signing with the Spurs last year was the simple desire to actually play.

The Clippers also, in all likelihood, have more money to offer. As of right now, the Clippers are around $12 million below the luxury tax. That leaves the full mid-level exception of around $14.1 million available to them. The Lakers, meanwhile, are pressed up against the first apron at the moment. For the time being -- and we'll get back to this -- that leaves them with only the taxpayer mid-level exception to dangle. That's around $5.7 million. This probably won't be a bidding war as there are only two teams involved here and Paul is about to turn 40, but if money is a factor, the Clippers just have more to offer.

Of course, that assumes that they want to offer it. While Paul remains a useful player, he's far from the best they can do with that money. As only the Nets are expected to have significant cap space this summer, the mid-level exception figures to put the Clippers in the running to nab almost anyone on the market. They might want Paul, but do they want him enough to pass on younger, more versatile players? The answer there is probably not, at least at that price.

There are also relationships to consider. Paul and James Harden were teammates in Houston between 2017 and 2019, and the two didn't exactly part on good terms. "James made this [expletive] happen," a league source told Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports of the trade that sent Paul to Oklahoma City. "He wanted Chris up out of there." In 2020, Paul told Chris Haynes that he and Harden "don't talk, communicate, nothing like that." Their interest in partnering back up may be limited.

The opposite is true on the other side here. LeBron James has wanted to play with Chris Paul for years. Paul is the godfather to James' second son, Bryce, and he is also the last member of the infamous banana boat crew that also includes Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony not to play on an NBA team with James. Back in 2016, James openly campaigned to play a season with the three of them, and he made a very interesting declaration in the process. "I really hope that, before our career is over, we can all play together," James told Howard Beck. "At least one, maybe one or two seasons—me, Melo, D-Wade, CP—we can get a year in. I would actually take a pay cut to do that."

Wade and Anthony are, obviously, retired, so the four of them teaming up is off of the table. But a James-Paul duo is still on the table, and if that pay cut offer is on the table for the Lakers, it could actually do them quite a bit of it. James was reportedly willing to take a pay cut last offseason to help the Lakers pursue a big name through either a sign-and-trade or the mid-level exception. They chased Klay Thompson and missed, so James took close to the max. By all accounts, he plans to pick up his player option at a similar price this summer.

But given how thin the Lakers are, such a pay cut would go a long way in setting him up to chase a fifth championship ring—and potentially help Paul win his first. Say James were to take a pay cut in the $15-20 million range. Doing so would open up enough money for the Lakers to use the mid-level exception on a younger role player—likely a center or a perimeter defender—and then give Paul the bi-annual exception, which will come in at a bit more than $5 million. They would be hard-capped at the first apron, but the bulk of their roster would be filled out before you consider the implications of possible trades.

There is of course no guarantee that James would leave money on the table even with Paul coming, though, and there's no guarantee that the Lakers would be interested in Paul at anything above the minimum if he doesn't. That sums up where both teams sit here well: there are arguments both for and against a Paul partnership. 

The Clippers can offer him a defined role and have an easier path to paying him, but his relationship with Harden is an obstacle, and given how old he, Harden and Kawhi Leonard are, their path to a championship would be perilous. The younger Luka Dončić would give him a better shot at a ring with the Lakers, and his friendship with James is another point in their favor, but the basketball fit would be clunky and their finances are a bit more complicated.

So for now, the answer is "we'll see." If either team views Paul as a legitimate option, its offseason will reflect that. We'll see it in the other moves they make and consider. Fits for neither are perfect, but if Paul really wants to finish his career in Los Angeles, the fit for at least one of them is going to prove good enough.