Screencap via YouTube
Here's a reality: Chris Paul is one of the best players in NBA history, and for the past couple years he was doing it while squinting because his eyesight was so poor.He had memorized the 15-letter eye chart to avoid being told that he needed glasses or contacts. He didn't want to get LASIK because he says he's a hypochondriac and his anxiety had him frightened, all despite his brother and father both raving about the surgery after undergoing it themselves during his rookie year.Not anymore. Paul got the surgery this summer.Perhaps not coincidentally, he's having a ridiculous season so far shooting from the floor. Paul came into the year shooting 36.5 percent from three for his career. This year, he's at 45.8 percent while shooting five threes a night. The Clippers have a league-best 10-2 record.Paul says he was a mess during his recovery from the surgery, however. He needed sedatives just to allow the doctor to do the procedure. He leaned on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, who both had it, for advice. He says he called his eye doctor nearly every day for three weeks."If something is wrong, I feel like I'm dying," Paul said, via Dan Woike of the Ocean County Register:"When I got the LASIK, they had to give me two Valiums. I was about to lay down and they (Paul imitates laser sound) … They tell you it's going to be grainy for a couple of weeks. I had to put eye drops in for two weeks, four times a day. I was having panic attacks."I couldn't sleep. These are your eyes. They get dry. I was stressed out."When talking about the surgery, which family members had been pushing him to get for years, Paul repeatedly says "These are your eyes" with disbelief in his voice because of how crazy the notion of laser surgery there seems to him.Now Paul is shooting better than ever.
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