Phoenix Suns: The pros and cons of starting Devin Booker at point guard

Con: What’s lost off the bench

The most logical lineup change with Booker shifting to the 1 would be bringing sharpshooter Troy Daniels into the starting five to help spread the floor. Booker is still young, and would need all the scoring help and floor-spacing he could get.

However, even with Daniels’ 3-point accuracy (42.5 percent this season) providing driving lanes for Booker, the Suns’ bench — which already ranks 25th in plus/minus — would sorely miss those 8.8 points per game.

There’s also the argument to be made that the Booker-Daniels-Warren trio is nowhere near as effective as Booker-Jackson-Warren:

In fact, lineups that include Booker and Daniels together have posted a Net Rating of -7.8, per NBA.com. According to nbawowy, lineups with Booker on the floor and all of Phoenix’s other point guards off the court yield an offensive rating of 102.1 and a defensive rating of 118.9. Ouch.

Those numbers should obviously be taken with a grain of salt considering the limited time Booker has spent at point guard full-time, along with the fact that the Suns have very little talent surrounding their franchise star to begin with.

However, losing Daniels’ sharpshooting or Jackson’s energy, defense and recent scoring touch off the bench might doom Phoenix’s second unit, which actually ranks seventh in the league in scoring. Replacing either one with the 5’10” Ulis would be a disaster, especially when paired with the similarly undersized Canaan.

An argument could be made the Suns should start Jackson at the 2, bring Daniels off the bench and simply ride the “hot hand” (read: “less frigid hand”) on a nightly basis between Ulis and Canaan, but conventional wisdom says it might be easier to just keep everyone at their normal spots.