Devin Booker Is The Real Deal

The NBA season is back in full swing, and with the regular season wrapped up, the bubble has already given us more fascinating storylines than we could have hoped for. The Raptors have become true contenders in the eyes of the entire league, Damian Lillard has become the Bubble MVP, and the Pelicans stunk out the gate, and crop-dusted the entire bubble from start to finish. Pretty much everyone is on the same page with these situations. But the NBA is never far from a little light-hearted controversy, and at the centre of it all is Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns.

Despite going 8–0 in over the past two weeks, the Suns were still unable to contend for the 8 vs. 9 seed play-in game, as the Blazers went 6–2 and knocked Phoenix out (and clinched the 8th seed for themselves) last Thursday night on a beautiful CJ McCollum jumper. Twitter has been lit aflame as people have argued the Suns deserved a play-in by pure virtue of going 8–0. They did everything in their power and they still go home? My personal take is that the Suns’ record has inadvertently tattled on Adam Silver and the NBA, who claimed to make health the number one priority, but also added too many teams in an attempt to get Zion Williamson and the Pelicans into the playoffs. At the time of the season stoppage, the Suns were the 13th seed and 6 games back of the 8th seed, with little hope of making the playoffs even in a full 82-game season. Bubble games shouldn’t technically be worth more than any other regular season win, even if it would be an incredible story to see them go 8–0, win the play-in, and have the honour of being swept by the Lakers in the first round.

Less controversial is the play of Devin Booker in the NBA’s return. Booker has been the source of much debate from the start of his career. Many have called him a good-stats-bad-team guy. Others have argued his clear scoring prowess is something you don’t see everyday, even if it hasn’t translated into wins. Like any debate in today’s age, there’s rarely room given for a gray area. He’s either the next Dion Waiters (maybe not an insult?) or the next Kobe Bryant. I tend to sit somewhere in the middle. I think Booker has great potential — he has rare patience and all-around offensive skills for his age — but I would still be surprised if he ever makes a First Team All-NBA. He’s undoubtedly a good player, but if Phoenix commits to him as the cornerstone of their franchise, I’m not sure how far Booker will get them. Taking into account where his defence is currently at, I don’t see him becoming a top 5 player. It goes without saying that much will depend on Deandre Ayton’s development.

Kevin Pelton’s Wins Above Replacement Player Table

Regardless, the Bubble Boy was electric for all 8 games the Suns played. In the NBA’s bubble-specific awards, Booker was unanimously named to the All-Bubble 1st Team, and was the runner-up to Damian Lillard for Bubble MVP. Skeptics have called his stats empty before, but there’s no doubt his play the past two weeks was impactful. Kevin Pelton’s Wins Above Replacement Player table has Booker ranked 3rd overall, by a decent margin. There’s not much room for debate on the merit of WARP here, as the top of the list contains the name of every player who performed well in the bubble. It’s a clear indicator of the fact that Booker’s numbers this year are not hollow.

Every great young guard on a bad team is able to put up some gaudy numbers; but regardless of how the Suns played in the past, this year was different. Despite the Suns landing near the bottom of the Western Conference standings this year (pre-bubble), they are clearly not the same team that finished 15th the past 3 years. Their roster is not filled with the likes of Alex Len, Dragan Bender, Marquese Chriss, and Josh Jackson — four high draft picks, all botched by Phoenix. Instead, the 2020 Suns have Booker and Ayton, surrounded by solid 3-and-D wings — Kelly Oubre, Mikal Bridges,and Cam Johnson — along with consistent, solid veterans like Aron Baynes, Ricky Rubio, and Dario Saric.

In the past, the Suns have heavily relied on Booker offesnsively, both to score and to create shots for others. Though he excels there, being a lead ball handler is not necessarily his skill set. His point guard skills have pleasantly surprised me, but there are very few young point guards who come into the league ready to lead a playoff team. There are far more Lonzo Balls than Ja Morants toiling away on NBA benches until they hit their prime. The Suns improvement on their roster and on the court has been spurred by Monty Williams, who has taken much of the workload off of Booker, and created a more modern, team-oriented style of play.

The evidence can be seen in Kevin O’Connor’s (of The Ringer) video on Booker and the Suns. This graphic, shown in the video, displays the different type of offensive possessions, and therefore different types of baskets, that Booker has been getting this year. Points off of spot-ups, handoffs, and cuts lead to a more efficient offense, and a more efficient offense naturally leads to more wins. Wins are hard to come by in the Western Conference, but Booker’s natural growth as a scorer and play maker, combined with a solid offense, has allowed him to become a truly impactful player. The Suns ranked 12th in Offensive Rating this year, and Booker is the engine that drives that offense.

In Bill Simmons’ Pyramid chapter on David Thompson in The Book of Basketball (page 327), he examines great shooting guards statistical progression as players from ages 22–24. He compares them alongside Thompson’s first few years as a promising young talent for the Denver Nuggets, before he tailed off due to cocaine issues. We are going to extend that exercise here to Devin Booker. I considered adding James Harden as well, but decided his role as 6th man in OKC didn’t make for a useful measuring stick. Here is the table found it TBOB, with Booker added at the bottom.

We know these rudimentary box score stats are not the end-all be-all, but it is encouraging to see that Booker fits right into this table. His scoring and free throw attempts aren’t quite as high as his comparatives, but this can be explained in part by a modern offense, where a dynamic shooting guard isn’t quite as aggressive with their shot selection. Kobe’s FTA were low in his early years, as they are many young players. Complete confidence driving to the hoop and taking contact takes practice. Physical maturity is important as well, another area Booker lags behind others in this table, given that he is just 23 years old. What separates Booker from the rest of this group is his athleticism; he is more athletic than most give him credit for, but he is certainly not on the jump-out-of-the-gym level of pretty much every else on the above list. Never the less, the fact that he compares favourably to a group of Hall of Famers should certainly be encouraging for Suns fans.

The elephant in the room here is of course the lack of All-NBA selections in contrast to everybody else. There are likely numerous explanations:

1. These basic box score statistics only tell a sliver of the story, and advanced statistics would leave Booker behind the rest of the pack, proving he’s not a top 12ish player like these other guys were in their early 20s. We will get to that later.
2. We are in a point guard golden age, and so there are far more good players competing for six spots.
3. The reality is that the voting awards media 25 years ago was more likely to vote for an exciting young, athletic guard putting up big numbers, as opposed to using actual statistical analysis (or watching actual games).
4. Guards just didn’t age as well as they do today, due to physicality, the style of the older game, inferior medical care, and lack of awareness of taking care of one’s body. When guards lose a step it becomes much more noticeable, as their natural size gives them less room for error to be bad, therefore “aging” out of All-NBAs with a quicker turnover rate than forwards and centers. If you do a quick scroll of all All-NBA selections, you will see how quickly things things change for guards. Save for the greatest guards ever — Oscar, West, Michael, Magic, Kobe (and Stockton)— there are no other guards with more than 10 All-NBA selections. The great Isiah Thomas was drafted in 1982, made his first of five consecutive All-NBAs in his sophomore season, then never made another after the age of 25. Even Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade sit at 8 selections. It is unlikely that Russell Westbrook , Steph Curry, and James Harden— at 8, 6 , and 6, respectively— get to 10 either. *Spoiler alert*, turns out it is really hard to be under 6'6" and play professional basketball at a high level for an extended period of time.

My theory is that with the modern game becoming increasingly perimeter oriented, and guards now being required to both score and pass at an extremely high level, it takes longer for guards to mature into their best selves than ever before. This along with the massive talent glut, has made it increasingly difficult to make All-NBA. Young players such as Mitchell, Morant, Young, Fox, Doncic, Simmons, and Booker have all exceeded expectations in running offenses at a young age. Booker sits comfortably in the top 30 players in the league, but didn’t stand any real chance of making All-NBA — and that’s with Curry and Irving out of contention this season. 30 years ago, Steph Curry doesn’t even stay in the league due to ankle problems. And Chris Paul, a lock for second team All-NBA, probably doesn’t excel for a new team at age 35. Same goes for Damian Lillard, a relatively unathletic point guard who’s already 30; in a league with rules favouring big men, what are the odds he is able to crack All-NBA versus the more athletic guards of the era? So though it’s a little jarring to see Booker on track with all the other great shooting guards, I don’t think Suns fans have any leg to stand on him being an All-NBA snub. I have no doubt he will garner such attention by the time he hits his prime, but for now, he remains ‘simply’ All-Star level. That will be fleshed out in some of the following advanced analytics.

Now it’s time to take a look at Booker’s advanced statistics, taken from BackPicks.com, and see how he aligns. Is the basic TBOB table just an illusion? Here is a variety of statistics relevant to guards.

Here is the legend, for reference:

• Load = offensive load, an estimate of the number of a player a player is “directly involved” in on offense every 100 possessions.
• Pts75 = points per 75 possessions. A metric that is statistically even across the board, but easier to translate to a game by game basis, than points per 100.
• rTS% = relative True Shooting percentage (true shooting compared to league average).
• Box Creation = An estimate of shots created for teammates per 100 possessions.
• Passer Rating = An estimate of a player’s passing ability on (approximately) a 1–10 scale.
• Spacing = A basic estimate of player spacing
• ScoreVal = Scoring value, an estimate of a player’s points per 100 impact from scoring only.
• PlayVal = Playmaking value, an estimate of a player’s points per 100 impact from playmaking only.
• BPM = estimates a players contribution while they are on the court (Ex: BPM of 5 = added 5 pts per 100 over player of average production.

*Take note that seasons displayed here are one year ahead of the basic TBOB table. This is to align with ages as marked on Basketball Reference. It really just makes Booker look even more impressive. The only player reflected differently is David Thompson, whose drop-off can be explained by the drug addiction that contributed to his short career .

Please don’t be intimidated by what looks like a lot of numbers. We will break some down:

Looking at some of the more basic metrics, Devin Booker’s points per 75 is relatively low, but that is a reflection of a more balanced offense, as his FGA are also slightly lower. His improvement in efficiency this past year is shown by a massive leap from 2.7% to 4.1% rTS. It is the best of any season listed here save for T-Mac in ’02 and MVP Michael Jordan in ’88. He makes up for his lower FTA with the best FT% of the bunch.

Booker’s experience as a ball handler and lead guard are on display in the playmaking stats. His Box Creation (an estimate of shots created for teammates per 100 possessions) is excellent — 8th overall in the league this past year. It was only marginally lower last year. His passer rating and playmaking value (PlayVal) is also high. These two stats, along with spacing, are slightly unfair to hold against the older guards, whose job requirements were not the same as playmaking guards in the modern NBA. But even comparing Booker to his contemporaries, he still impresses.

Booker’s ability, and lack of recognition thus far can be recognized by a couple revealing stats, the first being scoring value (ScoreVal). Those numbers are not easy ones to reach, and, save for Iverson, Booker’s scoring impact has not yet reached the ceiling of any of these shooting guards. Booker ranked 35th in the league this year. ScoreVal is by no means a perfect stat — there are outliers near the top — but the best players are all up there as well. The weaker players land high moreso because they provide so little passing value. But it’s no coincidence Michael Jordan’s finished with a ScoreVal of 2.5 in his 1988 MVP season, a figure 40% higher than Karl Anthony-Towns, who finished at the top of the league this season with a ScoreVal of 1.8.

Perhaps the most telling statistic listed above is Box Plus Minus (BPM), an excellent all-encompassing metric of a players impact. Booker finished 47th overall in the 2020 season. As you can see, most of the guards listed have BPMs hovering around 5–6, which would land them in the top 10 of this year.

So, the advanced stats are confirm much of what the eye test shows us. Booker is an excellent scorer, with efficient numbers, who has the ability to make plays and score at a high level — a requirement in the modern NBA. I mentioned earlier that I’m not sure I’d pick Devin Booker to make a First Team All-NBA in his career, an award reserved for the true upper echelon of the sport. These statistics do make me question that take. I will also note that being on track with as a previous player at the same age, does not prove someone’s ceiling to be just as high. Jaylen Brown was better than Paul George was at the same age, but I do not think Brown has a chance to reach George’s ceiling.

For the dreamers saying he’s an elite player, he still is not close to the elite guards of the game, or elite guards historically. This is evidenced in part by his teams mediocre record; even with a miraculous run in the bubble, it wasn’t enough to get out of the hole they were in after the regular season. Given Booker’s age, that’s okay, but he will have to continue his upwards trajectory, increasing volume and sacrificing as little as possible, if he wants to be one of the greats. Unless he becomes James Harden, which is damn near impossible, he will have to shore up his defense significantly as well. Young players on bad teams often struggle with defense, so his flaws through five years shouldn’t be held against him. But Phoenix’s expectations have been raised for next season, perhaps too high, given the fact that literally every team in the Western Conference will have the goal of making the playoffs next year. If he truly wants to have as much impact as possible, I hope he is willing to put in the effort on the defensive side of the ball as well.

However you may feel about his potential, Booker’s advanced statistics put him in good company. His performance in the bubble was an extremely fun and memorable display of his ability that will be talked about for years to come. His aptitude for scoring is not something you can just teach, but neither is hard work. Let’s hope Booker is able to reach his full potential as he enters his prime as one of the most skilled and fascinating young guards in the game today.