Golden State Warriors guard Chris Paul recently said Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey has no people skills and doesn’t know how to talk to others.
Paul spoke to Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade about a variety of topics, including Carmelo Anthony’s exit from the Houston Rockets, which is how Morey was brought up.
“If you know Daryl Morey, he — no people skills,” Paul said. “Real talk, y’know what I’m sayin’? He don’t really understand how to talk to people.”
Anthony was reportedly informed that the Rockets were moving on from him in November of 2018. Paul went on to say that he met with Anthony in a hotel room for some time after the Syracuse University product was informed and that Anthony cried during the conversation.
Paul seemingly still holds some ill will toward Morey for how things went down. As for Anthony, he spoke a bit about his Rockets exit to Chris Herring less than a year ago.
“Nobody ever really explained it to me,” he said. “To be honest, nobody can explain it to me, because there’s no real reason as to why any of that transpired. And I beat myself up about it. I took the role off the bench. I did everything they said I gotta do. So I kept thinking, It’s gotta be deeper than that. It felt like it was about more than just basketball at that point.”
What makes Paul’s comments about Morey to Wade even more interesting is that the point guard has had his own issues with Morey. In the summer of 2019, Paul was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder by the Rockets. However, he apparently had been told by Morey that he wasn’t going to be traded.
“My initial reaction?” Paul told The Undefeated, which is now known as Andscape. “I was shocked. Truth be told, I just talked to Daryl a couple days before the trade and he said he wasn’t going to trade me [to Oklahoma City]. That’s funny because that is going to be the alert that pops up on everybody’s phone because nobody knows that. But what the hell, I just said it.”
A few months after Paul got traded to the Thunder, Anthony gave his take on the situation. He told ESPN that he wasn’t surprised about how Paul’s Rockets exit had been handled and that he had even warned the Wake Forest University product.
Paul and Anthony aren’t the only ones that have had issues with Morey. Many NBA fans will recall how ugly things got between Morey and James Harden (another former Rockets player) in the 2023 offseason. It got to a point where Harden publicly ripped Morey, called him a “liar” and said he did not want to be a part of the same organization.
The 76ers eventually traded Harden to the Los Angeles Clippers in October of 2023. Harden is averaging 17.4 points, 5.1 rebounds and 8.3 assists per game for the 37-20 Clippers (fourth in the Western Conference). Philly is in sixth place in the Eastern Conference at 33-25.
It will be interesting to see if Morey ends up responding to Paul sometime in the near future. The Warriors and 76ers have already played each other twice in the 2023-24 regular season, so any more matchups between the two would have to come in the 2024 NBA Finals.
Perhaps Morey will be able to patch things over with Anthony, Paul and Harden eventually, but only time will tell.
