Chris Paul, Robber of Time

Indy Cornrows, SBNation's Indiana Pacers blog, was in attendance last night at Conseco Fieldhouse. They put up a couple great anecdotes on Chris Paul from the game. First, from the game recap:

Bruno mentioned that a fan was heckling [CP3] at the scorer's table before he went in to finish the game. At that point there was a little over six minutes left, the Pacers were up by two and Paul had eight points. He took the ribbing from the fan and then went out and score 11 more points. After the game he ran over and told the fan that he fired him up to finish it. Nice work fan. Even better work by CP3 to jump into the MJ zone and grasp onto any little slight, even from a heckler, to fuel a nasty and hostile takeover of the game.

And from another post this morning:

Chris Paul did another little thing that happened right in front of me otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed. The Hornets started the half with the ball, which they checked in from the baseline where I was sitting. Instead of taking the inbounds pass immediately and taking it up to start the half, Paul let the ball bounce up to just before the half court line before picking it up and starting the clock.

I made a quick note with this question: Will those three seconds make a difference?

Considering David West's game winner went through the net with about 2.5 seconds left in the game, I'd say the answer is yes.

Update: The heckler from the first story sent the following over to The Basketball Jones. Great read:

You know the story about Bosh's girlfriend and LeBron? That happened to me tonight. I was out in Indy sitting first row behind the scorer's table, chatting it up with players left and right (they were, however, ignoring me). The P's had a solid lead and CP wasn't showing up much directly on offense, missing several jumpers.  He came to check in at around 3:36, and I was in complete Pacers mode. Without thinking, I murmured, "CP ain't s***. He quickly turned around and said, "What? High off the fact that he even acknowledged me, I said, "Yeah, you're lucky T.J.'s (Ford) not playing. He replied, "Yeah, I prayed for that last night, and rolled his eyes and laughed. I was in complete disarray, and said to the man that I had so passionately spoken in MVP support for last year: "You shouldn't have been mentioned for MVP last year, Kobe is way better than you. He laughed and walked off. My friend gave me the "what have you done look.

CP, the passing machine, stopped passing then. He began to shoot every time he got the ball and took over the game going 6/8 and scoring 11 points in the final 3:36. I was standing and cheering passionately every time Granger hit a big shot and he was looking my way.

After a timeout, he walked from the bench to halfcourt smirking and smiling, staring me down the whole way. I gave him a thumbs down and shook my head. With 26 seconds left he drove, danced around with the ball and hit West for a wide open jumper to win it. I thought the game was over, but it wasn't.

CP went over, took a photo with someone, then walked in my direction. I stood up. He stopped directly in front of the scorers table and, pointing a solid finger, and said in LeBron fashion, "It's your fault. It's your fault. My legs began to shake as my star crush walked away.

What did I do.