Phoenix Suns: Complete 2018 offseason grades

The Devin Booker extension

There are plenty of reasons the Devin Booker extension was a no-brainer for the Suns, which have already been covered in-depth, but we’ll do our best to sum them up succinctly here: Booker is still young enough to improve his well known flaws, Phoenix really had no choice in the matter, and this 21-year-old is going to be really effing good.

Aside from consistently placing himself in prestigious company with his scoring, Booker averaged 24.9 points, 4.7 assists and 4.5 rebounds per game on .432/.383/.878 shooting splits last year — all of which were career highs. He got to the line more, took over late in games and despite what the advanced stats may say, was the only thing keeping the Suns even remotely competitive last year.

In fact, defense is really the only area of his game he didn’t improve in 2018-19, and there’s still reason to believe he’ll get better there with time, given his high basketball I.Q. and 6’7″ frame. It was hard to expect him to have energy on that end at age 21 with the enormous burden he carried offensively.

So yes, Booker is worth more to the Suns than just being the kid who dropped 70 points or the reigning 3-Point Contest champion. To put a proper price tag on it, they gave him a max extension for five years and $158 million that’s worth every penny to a franchise that locked in its star for the foreseeable future.

Now the pressure is on to put legitimate talent around Booker to keep him happy after three straight seasons under three different coaches without ever cracking 25 wins. Waiting until next summer for an extension or even letting him hit restricted free agency would’ve made zero sense.

For an organization negotiating from a position of weakness, there was no choice but to pony up and keep Devin Booker happy even if he wasn’t worth the money — which, again, as everyone who’s been forced to watch the Suns night in and night out will tell you, he absolutely is.

Grade: A