In addition to the age and injury issues, which others have mentioned, I'd also avoid Paul because, to me, he's never seemed like a championship-caliber player. Championship-caliber talent? Sure, no doubt. But from what I've seen, he's just never had the "it" factor—and I don't mean IT
; I mean that certain something that all championship-level stars have. He's just not a big-game player.
One could counter that IT doesn't have "it" either, or at least that he has yet to demonstrate that he has "it," but to that I would say he's still relatively young and has only a couple of playoff series under his belt, and in both of those series he was the only highly skilled offensive player for the Celtics, making it easy for the opposition to focus on him and slow him down. I think this year's playoffs—with Horford and (hopefully) a healthy Bradley and Crowder—will give IT more opportunities, and will tell us whether IT has "it."