Chris Paul getting hurt, unlucky, or both, is a kind of annual sports tragedy. This is not to suggest the man hasn't, as they say, "choked" — like anyone who has played 142 playoff games, sometimes the intensity of the springtime basketball spotlight has shown us moments of mental and spiritual paralysis from Paul, with the only thing stopping him from taking the victory in front of him being some ineffable inner torment that prevents his stepping calmly into higher success. This has happened with Chris Paul before, yes, but much less often than people suggest, and for the past several years, the 37-year-old has come up against the limits of his body more often than he has stumbled over more metaphysical hurdles. The plausible, corresponding "what if" scenarios of the body have really piled up; we can reasonably entertain what might have happened with his teams had he been able to stay whole in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021.