I believe this polémique lies in the fact that the most of us were raised in the belief that defense wins championships.
Nonsense, it lies in the fact that he's a point guard. They are a dime a dozen. Chris Paul doesn't win you championships. We're binding max money on a position where we could get 80% of the production for 20% of the cost.
Why do you think there's a glut of starting calibre point guards in the league right now? A generational anomaly?
It's the handcheck rule changes.
....
Apparently, people have come to the conclusion that this means you "need an elite point guard" to play with the big boys. After all, big stats = superstar, and superstars win championships. That couldn't be further from the truth. The artificial inflation of primary ball-handler stats has made point guards not more important, it made them replacable.
I concur with much of your post except for the highlighted conclusion.
The change in the rules has not so much made having an elite, scoring guard (or attacking wing like Harden)
replaceable so much as it has made having such a player a
necessity. To keep up in scoring now, you kind of have to have such a player.
The changes have also made
perimeter guard defense far less important than it was before (because the rules make stopping such attackers at the perimeter kind of futile) while increasing the importance of defense in bigs and wings (to deal with the inevitable penetration).