Leave it to Chris Paul to try outsmarting the competition with a slick move during an NBA event. The only problem is it came back to bite him this time.
Paul and his San Antonio Spurs teammate, Victor Wembanyama, were disqualified from the Kia Skills Challenge at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday night. The Skills Challenge sees players throw several passes into targets and also take shot attempts. Two players from the same team compete as a tag team, and they try to complete the obstacle course quickly.
Paul and Wembanyama completed their round in 47.9 seconds, but they were disqualified because they did not take “valid” shot attempts.
“We tried something that we thought could win to see if we had the best time,” Paul said afterwards.
Wembanyama said afterwards that trying to exploit the loophole with invalid shots was his idea. Wemby thought he had found a loophole and apparently asked different officials if they could try it out. Wemby seemed to think he would be able to get away with it, but the NBA quickly shut down the Spurs’ plan. It’s hard to believe they thought that plan would work when it so clearly violates the spirit of the event.
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ duo of Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley won the competition with a time of 1:00.03. They beat the Warriors’ duo of Draymond Green and Moses Moody.
Paul has now participated in the challenge six times without winning it.
