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Phoenix Suns: Devin Booker is a legitimate franchise star

By Gerald Bourguet

Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images /
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The Phoenix Suns have a long way to go in their rebuild, but Devin Booker is proving he is worthy of being the centerpiece.

Entering the 2017-18 NBA season, the only buzz louder than the Devin Booker hype were the cries that he was overrated. Despite being only 20 years old and playing on one of the worst teams in the NBA, Booker’s notable flaws took centerstage.

Sure, he could score. Sure, his shooting form was gorgeous. And sure, Drake wore his jersey once.

But even as he displayed incredible maturity through head coaching upheavals, locker room turmoil and trade demands for one of the league’s most dysfunctional franchises, his critics wondered if he’d ever be anything other than an inefficient gunner and a defensive sieve on the other end.

The Phoenix Suns are only 25 games into Booker’s third year in the league, but so far, the 21-year-old phenom is quickly putting those doubts to bed.

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Averaging 24.5 points per game, Book ranks 10th in the league in scoring. Unlike his first two seasons, he’s getting his buckets efficiently, shooting 45.9 percent from the floor, 38.9 percent from 3-point range and 87.3 percent from the foul line.

Booker is tied with LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo for the most 30-point performances in the NBA with 10 through his first 24 games. The efficient scoring breakthrough that many feared would never come is already here.

Monday night, on the fifth game of a six-game road trip, Booker had one of the best performances of his career, carrying the Suns to a win against a very talented Philadelphia 76ers team with a season-high 46 points, eight rebounds, two steals, one block and one assist.

Though he started the game 1-for-10, Booker once again proved his off nights are few and far between now, going 16-for-22 after that to finish 17-for-32 overall. He canned five of his eight 3-pointers, made seven of his eight free throws and broke the Sixers’ backs time and time again as they tried to mount a fourth quarter comeback.

Watching some of those plays, it’s hard to feel like Devin Booker is anything but a franchise star.

When the double-team comes, Book displays an uncanny level of comfort for a 21-year-old, quickly dribbling past Joel Embiid and finishing the dunk the way you’d expect from a superstar.

When Philly is on the ropes, Booker smells the blood in the water. Sensing the slightest bit of space, he launches from the Wells Fargo Center logo late in the shot clock to definitively put the game away.

Did the Suns need that shot to win? Probably not. But the true signs of a superstar revolve around ruthless confidence of unnecessary daggers just like that, along with the “OMG” reactions they elicit.

Considering this was coming off a 38-5-4 performance on 16-of-29 shooting against the Boston Celtics, Booker has made All-NBA defenders like Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown and Robert Covington look bad over the last few days.

After missing the first game of the Suns’ current road trip, Booker is averaging an eye-popping 34.8 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game on .543/.536/.889 shooting splits over his last four contests, putting him in line to join some pretty elite company if his numbers hold up for the whole season:

It’s not just garbage time scoring anymore either. On the rare occasions where the Suns are actually in the game, Booker is the definition of clutch, making four of his six game-winning or game-tying attempts at the buzzer so far in his career.

He routinely rises to the occasion when his team needs buckets, and that trend reared its head again on an insane game-tying 3 to force overtime against the Milwaukee Bucks in November:

The Suns lost that game, but the “Mamba Mentality” he seems to have learned from Kobe Bryant, one of his childhood heroes, is fairly apparent. Just take a look at his splits at home compared to on the road:

  • Booker at home: 13 games, 21.0 PPG, 4.6 APG, 4.5 RPG, .419/.325/.847 shooting splits
  • Booker on the road: 11 games, 28.7 PPG, 3.1 APG, 4.5 RPG, .502/.450/.896 shooting splits

Maybe this is more of an indictment of fan support at Suns home games than anything else, but Booker seems to relish the opportunity to silence opposing crowds. He feeds off the negative energy in enemy territory, turning the crowd’s nervous buzzing into eventual “Oooohs,” “Aaaaahs” and even cheers, as was the case in Boston for his 70-point game and in Philly Monday night.

But it’s not just his ability to put the ball in the basket that’s stood out in terms of making the leap. Once criticized for not doing anything other than score, Book is averaging 4.5 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. With Mike James and Tyler Ulis struggling off and on early this season, Booker has often been Phoenix’s best point guard.

Devin Booker currently joins Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins, Damian Lillard, Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and James Harden as the only players in the league to put up at least 24 points, four rebounds and three assists per game.

And while he’s still prone to getting lost off the ball, Devin Booker’s defensive effort has improved tenfold. Despite his heavy usage and being depended on to do everything, Booker is taking the defensive end personally for the first time in his young career. He’s become an effective on-ball defender, is fighting through screens and is tracking off-ball cuts.

"“I knew it was going to come with time,” Booker said. “Obviously coming into the summer I knew defense, for me, is something I had to take seriously.”"

He’s no lockdown defender by any means, especially for the league’s 28th-ranked D, but the effort is there. As he improves every other area of his game with the proper attention to honing his craft and earning superstar status, is there any doubt the progress will come on the defensive end too?

From his off-court maturity to his on-court killer mentality, Devin Booker has quickly molded into the form of the Phoenix Suns’ next franchise player at only 21 years old. If the Suns are anywhere near .500 by February, he will have a legitimate case to be the franchise’s first All-Star since Steve Nash in 2012.

It will take awhile for the rest of the NBA world to catch on and dispel old narratives about his poor defense, his inability to do anything other than score in garbage time, or the notion that his brand is putting up big numbers in losing efforts. It’s hard to blame them; NBA narratives are usually a year old, and the Suns aren’t exactly League Pass darlings.

However, Devin Booker is rapidly becoming a pretty damn good reason to tune in, and if the Suns can build a quality team around him, they now have the centerpiece that will put them in position to compete in the playoffs a few years from now.

Next: 2017-18 Week 8 NBA Power Rankings

Unlike the first two years of his career, how the Suns build around Devin Booker is a far greater concern than whether he’ll ever be worth building around.

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