Chris Paul spent years helping transform the Clippers from an afterthought into one of the NBA’s most recognizable teams. Yet months after an exit that still clearly bothers the veteran point guard, the franchise has made another questionable decision. CP3’s abrupt departure from the roster has now been followed by a jersey-number decision involving Bradley Beal. And supporters are not treating it as an innocent change.

“It’s probably one of the most disrespectful things that I’ve endured,” Paul said, speaking of his Clippers’ departure on a September 3 episode of the Build or Break podcast.

The former Clippers star explained that the situation affected more than just him, saying that the way the team handled his exit affected his family as well. Paul also pointed to the investment he and his family have made in the organization over the years before delivering his harshest conclusion.

“No matter what you do or what you’ve done, nobody cares. Seriously. Nobody cares. Nobody cares, and it teaches you.”

Now, the Clippers have given fans another reason to revisit those comments. Bradley Beal is switching from No. 0 to No. 3, the number that’s associated with Paul’s legacy. 

The backlash was immediate. One supporter summed up the sentiment bluntly: “They deserve everything that is happening to them.” A direct reference to the NBA’s recent punishment of the Clippers following its salary-cap circumvention investigation.

Another simply labeled the team as the “worst franchise in the league,” showing how quickly the jersey decision became part of a much larger criticism of the organization. 

Paul wore No. 3 throughout his six-season first stint with the Clippers from 2011–17, becoming the face of the franchise during the “Lob City” era. He then returned to the Clippers for his final NBA season in 2025-26 and wore No. 3 again.

And when Paul signed with the Clippers last summer, Beal was already wearing No. 3, the number he’d worn for his first 13 NBA seasons in Washington and Phoenix. Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank told reporters that Beal offered up the number on his own, before anyone even asked. Frank said Beal had scored more than 17,000 points wearing it, but “he also knows what that jersey means to Chris”. Beal switched to No. 0 for the season instead, which is to say that no one else, besides Paul, has worn the Clippers’ No.3 since 2011.

But the goodwill didn’t survive. The Clippers parted ways with Paul in December, then sent him to Toronto in a three-team trade-deadline deal with the Nets in February. Toronto later released him, and Paul announced his retirement on February 13, closing out 21 seasons.

The bigger sting is what Paul says he was told would happen to the number. In comments made on Carmelo Anthony’s 7PM in Brooklyn podcast, Paul said Frank had promised him the Clippers would one day put No. 3 in the rafters. Less than a year later, it’s back on a rack in the team store. The Clippers have never officially retired the number, so nothing was technically broken. But they’ve also never retired any number for any player, which made Paul’s six seasons of building the case, the playoffs every year, an All-NBA level of play, and the franchise’s all-time assists record the obvious starting point for fans.

Hence, another supporter went directly after the organization’s relationship with Chris Paul, writing, “Clippers still mad they couldn’t just blame CP3 for all their problems, unbelievable scummy organization.”

That frustration became even sharper when another fan questioned why the organization has not retired Paul’s number. “Damn no jersey retirement for Chris Paul is slack asf,” the fan wrote.

Paul’s legacy with the Clippers remains complicated. The team never reached the NBA Finals during his tenure, and injuries repeatedly disrupted the group’s ambitions. But his arrival helped create the Lob City identity, while his partnership with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan turned the Clippers into a regular playoff contender.

And before Chris Paul got to LA in December 2011, the Clippers were running the league’s 22nd-ranked offense and had made the playoffs only once since 1997-98. They went from there to becoming the fourth-ranked offense in Paul’s first season and made the playoffs for the first time since ’05-06 (and only the second time since ’97-98).

By 2012-13, the team hit a franchise-record 56 wins, then broke that mark again the next season with 57, a number that still stands as the franchise’s best. Somewhere in that same run, the Clippers also snapped a 38-year-old franchise record by winning 12 straight games, breaking a mark set by the Buffalo Braves back in 1974-75.

In 2013-14, Paul led the league in assists for the third time in his career and steals for the fifth time, earning spots on both the All-NBA and All-Defensive First Teams. None of it got the Clippers past the conference semifinals, and the team never reached a conference final during his time there. But he is still the only player in NBA history to help four different franchises set single-season win records, doing it with New Orleans, the Clippers, Houston, and Phoenix.

That said, Beal has also found himself pulled into the controversy. One fan offered a particularly harsh assessment: “Bradley Beal a clown too for accepting that.”

Beal’s first response to the social media noise was a shrug: “Is that the topic of the day? Lol”. However, he followed it with something more direct, paying respect to Paul: “He’s a legend! The HISTORY and BRAND can’t be touched, nor erased!!!”

For the Clippers, it may simply be a jersey assignment. For supporters still protective of Paul’s legacy, it represents something much bigger. And with every reaction, the organization is being forced to confront the uncomfortable question of how it treats the players who helped build its identity.