LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Chris Paul will be wearing his No. 3 jersey in his return to the Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n
Newly acquired Bradley Beal has agreed to give Paul the number that Beal has worn his entire NBA career, according to Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce Brad heard it’s a possibility Chris was coming he said, \u2018I want to give him my number,\u2019 and I don\u2019t even think Chris knows this yet,\u201d Frank said Tuesday on a teleconference call. \u201cIt\u2019s awesome that Brad made such a great gesture like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frank said Beal understands what the jersey number means to Paul, who is widely known by his nickname \u201cCP3.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul played last season in San Antonio and forward Keldon Johnson gave up wearing No. 3 so Paul could have it. Paul has worn the number since he entered the NBA in 2005.<\/p>\n
Beal has yet to decide what number he’ll wear for the upcoming season, Frank said.<\/p>\n
Paul, a free agent, signed with the Clippers for what is expected to be his 21st and final NBA season, citing a desire to return to Los Angeles where his family lives. He played 82 games for the Spurs, but will come off the bench for the Clippers.<\/p>\n
\u201cChris was the best guy for the job as long as we all understand what the role is,” Frank said. \u201cThere will be nights Chris plays a lot and there will be nights he does not.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Chris Paul will be wearing his No. 3 jersey in his return to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-17143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}