Culture
Chris Paul said he isn't retiring, but is there any future with the Warriors?
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Chris Paul is 11 hours from his 19th NBA season ending. He’s less than a month from turning 39. He takes a seat in the third row of Golden 1 Center after the Golden State Warriors’ morning shootaround in Sacramento. Later that night, the Sacramento Kings blow them out 118-94, an elimination that also throws into question Paul’s immediate future.
But this much is clear: Paul is not retiring. He will play a 20th NBA season somewhere.
“I’ll talk to my wife and my kids, my family, my support system, see what it looks like,” Paul told The Athletic. “But this isn’t (the end of my career). I know it for sure.”
Paul remains under contract for the Warriors next season, but there’s a necessary caveat. All $30 million of his deal is non-guaranteed. Part of the Warriors’ reasoning behind the Jordan Poole for Paul trade last offseason was the financial flexibility it would provide this summer. The Warriors can use it as a trade vehicle or wipe all $30 million off the books before it guarantees on June 28.
Those options and decisions will be explored in the coming weeks. But Joe Lacob and the Warriors’ ownership group have already indicated a desire to avoid the second apron and even duck the luxury tax entirely, resetting the repeater clock. Salary slashing is needed for that goal. Tuesday’s elimination — capping a turbulent 46-win season that finished with the 10th seed and zero playoff home dates — would only seem to accelerate that desire for a financial pullback.
So Paul’s future with the Warriors is as uncertain (and perhaps more unlikely) than any other player who left the locker room late Tuesday night.
“I haven’t thought about it,” Paul said. “I’m too in it. I was in the gym at 8 a.m. this morning, lifting and getting ready for this game. When it’s time for that, Mike (Dunleavy) and Steve (Kerr), we’ll have a conversation and see what it looks like. But I loved it. It’s honestly — this is my fifth year living without my family — I probably saw them more than any other year.”
That’s because of the proximity to Los Angeles, but also because of Kerr’s open culture. Families are welcomed into the interior of the Warriors’ building and around the team more than is typical in the NBA.
“That’s probably what I appreciated the most out of everything is just the communication of letting me know when days are going to be off,” Paul said. “Then your family can fly on the team plane like, I ain’t seen that. I’m grateful to Steve for that.”
When Paul went searching for a temporary place to stay in San Francisco after the trade, his wife helped him find a high-rise. Soon after moving into it, he discovered another notable tenant lived a floor below. He had moved into Draymond Green’s building.
“Luckily it’s nice enough that you can’t hear the person below,” Paul said.
Paul’s inner circle showed varying forms of shock and apprehension after he joined the Warriors, his heated conference rival the previous decade. There’d been so many competitive dust-ups and heated playoff nights between the sides. But Paul embraced it quickly, believing in the shared traits between the sides.
“I didn’t expect it to be bad,” Paul said. “When the trade happened, I was excited, I was energized. It’s been really cool to see all the basketball knowledge, the way different guys approach every day. When people ask about my experience here, I tell them I sort of got a chance to peek behind the curtain.”
The Warriors faced the Utah Jazz at home on a Sunday toward the end of the season. They faced the Lakers on Tuesday in Los Angeles. After the Utah game, Paul, Green and Klay Thompson — who all have homes in L.A. — chartered a plane down a day before the team. Trevor Ariza happened to be in town. Paul told Ariza to hop on their plane.
Ariza was a part of those Houston Rockets teams that the Warriors eliminated in the Western Conference finals twice. He knows how heated the rivalry became between Paul and the Warriors, how much Paul stewed over the losses, and how the Warriors taunted after the wins.
“He was sitting in the plane like, ‘Man, I would have never thought. …’” Paul said. “‘I would’ve never thought we’d all be on here together.’”
Paul and Green didn’t envision it, but they embraced it once it arrived on their doorstep. Literally. Green took the elevator a floor up and went over to Paul’s house on several occasions throughout the season, watching other NBA games, college, NFL — talking basketball schematics, life, family, kids, future.
“I’m thankful and honored, happy as hell I got the opportunity to play with him this year,” Green said. “It’s not something in a million years we ever imagined. Other than winning, it couldn’t have gone better. Built a relationship that’ll go beyond whether he’s here next year or not and whether I’m here next year or not. I haven’t come across many, if any, guys like him.”
Paul and Green built a connection off the court as well. (D. Ross Cameron / USA Today)
Paul also built a relationship with Thompson. Paul accepted a reserve role in the third game of the season, coming off the bench for the first time in his 19-year career, a move that Kerr said sent a message to the rest of the roster about sacrifice. Thompson accepted a bench role in February for the first time in more than a decade. The two then connected a second-unit duo. Kerr tied their minutes together.
Paul told Thompson several times throughout the season that he’d get on his boat for a ride across the San Francisco Bay. They had to cancel once because of bad weather. This past week, before the last game of the regular season, Paul and Moses Moody rode across the water with Thompson to the game.
“Really cool,” Paul said. “It’s always going to be a little choppy when you get to the deep water, but…”
Then Paul went bigger picture.
“I got so many (former teammates) in my career that, like, I have no relationship with,” Paul said. “Don’t really care to or anything like that. Or people who don’t like me or whatever. That don’t keep me up at night. But I’m grateful that I got a chance to be here with these guys. Me and Steph were already connected. Me and Dray definitely, you know, got a real connection now. And somebody I’m grateful that I really got a chance to know is Klay.”
Paul understands the business better than just about any other current player. He knows his contract setup, the Warriors’ tax crunch and will be in on the conversations that dictate his 2024-25 NBA home. Some paths could theoretically bring him back on a cheaper deal. He says he loved his time with the Warriors on a personal level.
But there’s the basketball side that also complicates the equation. Paul isn’t necessarily ready to just accept a lower-usage backup point guard role for the final seasons of his career. He remains of the belief that he can still run a team on a high-minute basis. Paul averaged 26.4 minutes per game this season. He’d been at 32 the last couple of seasons and averaged 34.6 for his career, never dipping below 31. All his counting stats were career-lows.
“I try to do the most with the opportunity that was given,” Paul said. “For me, it’s always been about winning, whatever that looks like. But I know I got a lot more to give to the game. The situation is what it is. But I’ve loved every bit about (this season). I’ve loved every bit of it. Getting a chance to compete with these guys.”
As the Warriors shifted around the rotation repeatedly this season, Paul fit perfectly as Stephen Curry’s backup point guard. They performed better as a team without Curry than they had in several seasons. But Kerr struggled to find usable lineups with both Curry and Paul on the floor because of the size disadvantage, especially with Thompson also out there.
“It’s a difficult situation for him that he handled beautifully,” Kerr said. “He’s always been the starting point guard for his team. But you look at our team and we’re pretty small. Even though he’s one of our best players, if we want to throw our best players out there — and he’s one of them — you start adding up Chris, Steph, Klay, it’s not the ideal roster for him.
“But he was fantastic for us because he became our backup point guard. As I’ve said many times, our non-Steph minutes were the best they’ve ever been because of Chris’ leadership.”
Not the ideal roster for him. That’s the subsection of that Kerr quote that probably hits the hardest. Paul, on a reasonable deal, still makes plenty of sense for the Warriors as a backup point guard to stabilize them with Curry out. But he still desires more and his on-court impact and production and market could justify that, making a reunion unlikely.
“You saw tonight, (the Kings’) size and physicality overwhelmed us,” Kerr said. “When you look at the combinations that we have out there, it usually kind of separates Steph and Chris and Klay. So there’s not as many minutes as Chris would like.
“But the way he handled it this season was incredible. He’s so professional. Such a great mentor for the younger guys. One of the great pros I’ve ever been around. I love coaching Chris and I really hope we bring him back.”
(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey / NBAE via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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