The Continued Growth of Devin Booker
Last season, Devin Booker was selected as First Team All-NBA for the first time and also finished fourth in MVP voting behind only Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. He led the Suns to a franchise record 64 wins even after starting the season 1–3. And despite the Suns’ well publicized implosion versus the Mavs in the playoffs, it was still a great year for Booker.
Early in his career, Booker was largely overlooked in terms of individual accolades. Some writers and podcasters unfairly labeled him as a “empty stats” player when he was putting up numbers on historically bad Suns teams. Given his high efficiency (26.6 ppg on 60.2% TS in his age 22 and 23 seasons) and his poise in clutch moments, it was just a very misinformed -in some cases biased- take.
Booker has made three game winning shots since coming into the league in 2015, and more impressively, all were unassisted. That’s more buzzer beaters than players like Jayson Tatum, Steph Curry, and Kawhi Leonard. To be a superstar caliber player in this league, you need to be able to create and make your own shot.
Offense
Today, Booker is still the lethal scorer he always has been. He’s not flashy like Ja or whips fancy passes like Jokic, but he’s effective. He is part of one of the most lethal mid-range pairings in the league with Chris Paul. And most importantly, he now knows what it takes to win games.
Looking at his 21–22 stats at first glance, you might think he didn’t make much of a jump from the previous season. Sure, there was a slight increase in points, steals, rebounds, blocks, and even less turnovers. But on paper, nothing really jumped out at you. Not that he didn’t put up star numbers-like a career high 26.8 ppg and 38.3% from three- but Book also elevated his game in other ways to help his team win more games.
That’s why you can’t just look at stats to determine a player’s growth. You have to use your eyes.
That being said, stats are a good way to eliminate personal biases and to evaluate a player objectively.
Booker has an absurd amount of influence on the quality of the Suns offense, almost like how Nash turned the Suns into a perennial offensive juggernaut in the 2000s. Obviously they bring much different qualities to a team, so it’s tough to try to compare their impact on an offense. Booker brings elite scoring ability at all three levels, while Nash’s passing and creativity in the Seven Seconds Or Less teams helped revolutionize the NBA.
Booker was the heart of the Suns offense last season.
As seen in the table below, the Suns had an offensive rating of 119.4 with him on the floor and sputtered to 110.1 with him off it.
This would have been the difference between the top ranked offense versus the 22nd last season.
Defense
While Book has always been a talented offensive player, the area in which Book made the most improvement was clearly his defense. He was much less susceptible to ball watching and made big strides in his on-ball defense. He’s always been competitive and pretty solid at on-ball defense, but he really started locking down this past season.
As always, defensive stats should be taken with a pinch of salt because they aren’t perfect. A lot of things go into defending, and much of it depends on how good your teammates are defensively. Again, this is where we have to use our eyes to properly judge a player. Is the player hedging off of screens properly? Is he late in rotating on switches?
In any case, it is still worth noting that Book held opposing guards to an incredible 37% FG last season.
While Mikal Bridges was the primary defender on some of the league’s best players every night, Booker did not shy away from a challenge. As a whole, Book’s DFG% was 43.3%, an impressive number from someone who somehow still has a reputation of being an average defender at best.
DFG% for those who don’t know is defined by NBA.com as “the opponent’s field goal percentage on shots when the player is defending the shot”. Pretty straightforward, right?
Booker being a bad defender is a take outdated by a few seasons.
Shot Selection
In regards to his offense, Booker made some adjustments here as well, especially in terms of shot selection.
He is now taking more mid-range shots than ever, taking 467 last season compared to 346 the previous season. Booker is a throwback player in that he takes what the defense gives him in the soft mid-range zone, that open space of the court that modern defenses leave open to defend shots at the rim and shots outside of the arc.
Many present day analytics shun mid-range shots for its supposed lack of efficiency, but the mid-range is still a very important shot, especially for elite mid-range players like Booker.
Booker is known for his beautiful jump shot mechanics and also is a former Three Point Contest Champion, so it may be surprising to many people that he has never had a 40% three point shooting season. However, as previously mentioned, Booker tied his career high in 3PT% last season.
How did he do it? Let’s take a look at his shot selection in the tables below.
He did it by doubling the looks he had on corner threes, making 26/66 at a clip of 39.4% and making a massive improvement on his above the break threes. Not only did he make 38.1% on those shots last season compared to only 32.5% the season prior, he did it on more volume.
Passing/ball security
Another underrated part of Booker’s development has been his passing and his ability to limit turnovers.
Compared to early in his career, Booker is much better at finding the open man off of dribble penetration and on pick and rolls. His assist numbers may be down from the 2018–19 season, but his assist numbers were a little inflated because Booker was running the point more. He also had a 6.5 assist season in 2019–20, but he and Rubio shared playmaking duties.
Now, he has the Point God on his team and is back in his preferred role of playing more off ball.
In 2018–19, he averaged 6.8 assists per game and 4.1 TOs per game for a TO% of 15.4%. Last season, he averaged 4.8 assists on only 2.4 TOs a game (TO% of 9.3).
Looking at StatMuse’s chart below, you can see a positive trend of Booker’s AST to TO ratio. Booker is taking better care of the ball and still finding his teammates well. It dipped slightly in 2020–21, as Chris Paul and Booker were still adjusting to each other in the new look of the Suns offense.\
2022–23 Season
Devin Booker clearly made a leap last season, but now the question is if he can take another one this season. The Suns will need him to if they want to make another trip back to the Finals.
So far into the 2022–23 season, Booker is looking even better. He’s playing like an MVP candidate, leading the team to a 5–1 record despite a tough start to the schedule. The Suns have beat potential Western Conference contenders like the Mavericks, Clippers, Warriors, and Pelicans, while narrowly losing to the Blazers in OT. Booker is averaging 29.3 ppg, 3.3 rpg, and 5.5 apg on shooting splits of 53/36/86 for an absurd TS% of 63.3%.
The good thing for the Suns, and the scary thing for their Western Conference rivals, is that Booker is still only 26 with room to grow, and is possibly about to enter his competitive prime. After being an MVP candidate and being named an All-NBA First Team player, the time for Booker is now.
Announcement:
Unless something major comes up, this may be my last Suns article for a while. With the World Cup coming up soon, I’d like to shift my focus to the World Cup. I’m not sure when I’ll post about the Suns or NBA again, but it shouldn’t be too long. In the meantime, go Suns!
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