Chris Paul discovered he didn’t really need a translator to teach young players in China some of the skills he uses so effectively in the NBA.

“The best thing about the whole situation was the fact that, with basketball, there’s no language barrier,” Paul said.
Paul spent the early part of this week in the world’s most populous country, serving as an instructor at a basketball camp, dedicating a court, launching a Chinese edition of his basketball shoe and even visiting the factory workers who make it.
It was the first trip back to China for the Hornets’ star point guard since he helped Team USA win gold at the 2008 Beijing Games. Paul has said that touring China with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James during the Olympics made him feel like a member of the Beatles.
This trip, Paul said, was a little different.
“I think what I enjoyed the most about it was I had an opportunity to actually get out and speak to people and touch people,” Paul said in phone interview from Los Angeles, where he was filming a commercial for Nike’s Jordan Brand.
Paul’s tour started in the city of Tianjin, where he spent a day at an elite youth basketball camp.
“We had an opportunity to play with some of the kids and really show them some of the things that I do when I play, so that was a lot of fun to see the smiles on their faces and know they were enjoying it as much as I did,” Paul said. “The kids worked really, really hard and I think that was the biggest thing that impressed me — and I think a couple of the kids’ athleticism really shocked me, too.”
Paul moved on to Guangzhou, where he dedicated a new outdoor basketball court at an inner-city school and donated some of his new Jordan CP3 II China Edition shoes to each member of the school’s basketball team. That stop included the formal launch of the shoe, which is decorated with Chinese characters symbolic of the All-Star point guard’s life.
One character, for example, represents the month of May, when Paul was born and also received 2005-06 NBA rookie of the year honors.
What Paul called the “real highlight” of the trip came when he visited the nearby factory where the shoes are made, meeting with workers on the factory floor.
“That was a great feeling and something I’ll never forget,” he said. “They were very excited, smiled and they were just happy to meet me. They put so much effort into the shoes, and to actually get an opportunity to meet the athlete, I think they enjoyed it, as I did.”
When Paul is finished shooting his latest commercial in Los Angeles, he’ll return to his hometown of Winston-Salem, N.C., and host a pair of basketball camps in the state. He’s scheduled to return to New Orleans in mid-September for his charity golf tournament at the same TPC of Louisiana course that hosts a PGA Tour event every spring.
That will cap the end of an eventful offseason in which Paul became a father (he had a son), went back to school at Wake Forest with the intent of one day earning a degree in religion, and started a new training regimen that he hopes will make him stronger and more durable as he enters his fifth NBA season.