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The long-running beef between Chris Paul and Scott Foster is one of the strangest running storylines in the NBA thanks in no small part to the murky origins of the well-documented feud. However, we may finally know how it started.
As a general rule, if fans are intimately familiar with a certain official, it’s usually for all of the wrong reasons, and that’s certainly the case with Scott Foster.
The veteran NBA ref (who was seemingly a very close associate of the disgraced Tim Donaghy) is probably best known for his rocky relationship with Chris Paul, and plenty of people are convinced he has a vendetta against him when you consider Foster has been the ref in 20 playoff games involving the guard (including 15 where his team was favored) where he’s gone 3–17 and lost by an average of more than 11 points.
Earlier this month, Paul was ejected from a game after calling Foster a “b—-,” and after the contest, he acknowledged he had a sitdown with the ref during his time on the Clippers while alluding to some sort of incident involving his young son.
The fairly cryptic nature of that admission didn’t address the origins of their feud, but it appears we finally have some insight into the incident that sparked it courtesy of Gilbert Arenas.
On a recent episode of Gil’s Arena, Agent Zero and his crew discussed an unaired portion of a previous discussion with Paul concerning what unfolded with Foster and his son, as co-host Josiah Johnson detailed the incident that supposedly sparked the beef.
Here’s what he had to say:
“The situation with his son, I believe after a game, Little Chris was playing in the tunnel.
Scott Foster, in the car with the other refs, rolls up to him, honks the horn at him, yells at him ‘Get the f— out the way!’ and some other expletives—to a little kid.
CP3 finds out about that. Naturally, like any of us would do with our kids, is not particularly happy about that.”
He and Arenas added Paul also claimed Foster approached him before games on multiple occasions to call attention to the aforementioned record, which seems like something someone who gets paid to officiate basketball games for a living shouldn’t go out of their way to do.
When you consider the NBA has seemingly declined to address the situation, there’s no reason to believe it will change going forward, but at this point, it’s hard to ignore the league’s inaction on the matter.