Paul's departure is another embarrassing chapter for Clippers

The Los Angeles Clippers' disastrous season took its most unexpected turn Wednesday, when the team announced it will part ways with franchise legend Chris Paul.

Paul, a future Hall of Famer who recently announced that he'll retire at the end of the season, had signed with the Clippers to finish his career playing for the organization he once famously lifted off the mat of irrelevance. His second stint in L.A. lasted 16 games and ended with the 40-year-old point guard being sent home in the middle of the night.

How the situation resolves itself - and where Paul ultimately lands - is partly dictated by the NBA's convoluted salary cap. But that's a story for another day.

Within hours of his departure, reports emerged that Paul had been vocal in holding everyone accountable during L.A.'s 5-16 start. That record has the Clippers sitting 14th in the Western Conference and bottom-five overall in a year in which the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder own their first-round draft pick.

ESPN's Shams Charania reported that the team felt Paul's leadership style had become disruptive, while Amazon Prime Video's Chris Haynes added that head coach Ty Lue refused to meet with Paul when the point guard requested a sit-down to discuss allegations that he had become a negative presence.

It's no secret that Paul can be ornery. The 21-year veteran is ruthlessly competitive. He's also one of the sharpest basketball minds the league has ever seen, and he's not afraid to let you know it.

Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic recently relayed a story to me originally told by fellow Serbian Peja Stojakovic, who was reflecting on his time with Paul in New Orleans. Stojakovic was already a three-time All-Star and respected veteran when CP3 arrived on the scene as an overzealous rookie. "Chris Paul came in, and from day one, he was talking and acting like a leader," Rajakovic said. "Stojakovic was like, 'Who the hell is this rookie trying to tell us what to do and what not?' And then (Stojakovic) said that two weeks into training camp, he was like, 'I'm gonna listen to this guy. He knows what he's talking about.'"

Perhaps Paul's act simply wore thin now that he isn't nearly as effective and couldn't be on the court as often to back his words up. The 12-time All-Star is averaging 2.9 points and 3.3 assists on 32% shooting, while his 14.3 minutes per game are a career low; roughly half of what he averaged in San Antonio last year (28.0).

Still, he's one of the game's most revered leaders, and the Clippers, of all teams, knew exactly what they were signing up for.

Paul spent six season in Los Angeles from 2011-17. Current owner Steve Ballmer and team president Lawrence Frank were with the organization for the final three years of Paul's original tenure, while Lue served as an assistant coach during the 2013-14 campaign. James Harden spent two seasons with Paul in Houston, during which they came agonizingly close to toppling the mighty Golden State Warriors (had it not been for a hamstring injury Paul suffered in the 2018 Western Conference finals). Paul and Harden clashed as Houston Rockets teammates, but the point remains. There shouldn't have been any surprises when it came to Paul's direct manner.

Does this have anything to do with Kawhi Leonard, whom the Clippers have bent over backwards for since acquiring the two-time Finals MVP in 2019? Leonard barely plays and is at the center of an alleged cap-circumvention scandal, but it wouldn't shock me if we learned that criticism of Leonard played a role in Paul's departure.

It's also quite possible that the only reasonable explanation here is simply the Clippers being ... well, the Clippers. Remember, this is the same franchise that traded Blake Griffin only six months after making a free-agency pitch that included likening the six-time All-Star to "pioneers" Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein, Barack Obama, and Michael Jackson. This is the franchise whose greatest accomplishment is a Leonard-less conference finals appearance five years ago.

We may never know the full story of this stunning and bizarre ending to Paul's relationship with L.A., but one part of it is all too familiar: The Clippers come away looking like a joke.

Joseph Casciaro is theScore's lead NBA reporter.