Devin Booker is ON THE CLOCK ⏰ Kendrick Perkins on the Suns this season | NBA Today

Devin Booker is ON THE CLOCK ⏰ Kendrick Perkins on the Suns this season | NBA Today

Well, media days continue around the league. Devin Booker, he spoke for the first time this season. The Suns, they held theirs just a few hours ago. So, we’re going to hear from him momentarily. But in case you need a reminder on this season’s huge changes in Phoenix, let’s do that now because both Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant, they’re no longer with the team. Be agreed to a buyout. He joined the Clippers. Durant, he was sent to the Rockets in a historic 17 team trade. Jaylen Green and Dylan Brooks. They formed part of the Suns return in that deal. But Phoenix also replaced Mike Budenhoer with first-time head coach Jordan, who of course spent seven seasons as an NBA assistant coach. And the Suns, they also signed their all-time leading scorer Devin Booker to a two-year $145 million max extension. The 28-year-old, he enters the season with 5 years and over 300 million left on his deal. He spoke earlier today. you know, not not getting to where we wanted to with with Kevin and Bragg, two guys that I have a high respect for and and always will. Um, you know, the opportunity to play alongside them was, you know, a lot in its own, but, you know, it’ll always be a disappointment to me to, you know, not do what, you know, we all sought out to do. I’m excited to play with Book. Um, I think it’s going to be a good situation. I think I’m going to be able to learn a lot from him while at the same time, you know, adding what I could bring to the table. Um, I think we going to compliment each other a lot, especially, you know, with the system that Oscar is playing in. Um, I think we going to be playing fast and I think we going to be able to create a lot for each other and create for others. So, um, I’m very excited about it and I think we going to shock a lot of people, too. Well, if you can shock Big Perk, then you know you’ve really done something. And Kendrick Perkins is here alongside our front office insider Bobby Marshall, senior writer Tim Bontemps. Perk, I’m going to start with you here. You heard Jaylen Green. He says they’re going to shock a lot of people. Does this include you? You’re damn right it do. I’m waiting for them to to shock me, especially after the performance Jaylen Green put on last in in the postseason, averaging about nine points is the reason that the Rockets got rid of him. But I’m looking at Devin Booker right now and I’m saying he’s on the clock. And when I say on the clock, it’s time for Devin Brook Booker to show the world that he belongs, right? And when I say belong, belong in the company of a Anthony Edwards, belong in the company of a SGA. Can he be a guy that could be uh that guy, that number one option of this Phoenix Suns franchise? And I’m waiting to see it. Like, yes, he went to the NBA finals, you know, three or four years ago. And yes, but he had CP3. He Yeah, he had CP3. He had the uh DeAndre Aton. And now all of a sudden, you done lost a lot of coaches throughout the these last four years. You done lost a lot of players. Now I’m ready to see and it’s time for Devin Booker to prove that he belongs in that elite company. So Perk, you aren’t the only one that would be surprised here because young Mr. Bontemps, who is sitting to my left, he just finished up a guy poll, right? ESPN’s NBA future power rankings. And in your findings, Tim, Bobby was also part of that. Bobby Bobby was a part of this as well. I just feel like when we hear poll, I think of Tim Bod spearheading the efforts here for us at ESPN. Um, the Suns, they finished near the very bottom. Is that right? They finished at the bottom at last. At last, as you can see here, they’re 30th in the Future Power Rankings. And look, when you look at where the Suns are at, it’s not a huge shock, right? This this ranking takes into account what your draft pick situation is. The Suns obviously don’t have any draft picks going forward. It takes into account your financial situation. They just waved $100 million of Bradley Beal’s contract. And it also most importantly takes into account your current talent level and the Suns just lost Bradley Beiel and Kevin Durant and replace them as Perk said with Jaylen Green and Dylan Brooks. Like that is not an that’s not an equitable talent trade, right? So while I think Perk’s points about Deon Bookser, Deon Booker are fair. Y there’s a lot more problems in Phoenix than the state of Deon Booker’s. I always appreciate the cheer that you bring to this set, Tim. Um, Bobby, I didn’t mean to to dismiss you from the poll. It was you, it was Kevin Pelton, and it was Tim Bontebs. Uh, the the the the state of this team right now juxtaposes what we heard at media day is what? Well, I have good news for you Phoenix Suns fans out there. Uh, about three years ago, we also had the New York Knicks on the bottom of the future power rankings. And look where New York is right now as far as a contending team in the in the Eastern Conference. I will say this, and it might be shocking to you, they’re in a better spot right now than they were a year ago because they have ripped the band-aid off of an experiment that did not work with Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. But it’s two years later and now they’re cleaning up the pieces here with some younger players with um certainly Mark Williams who they went out and made a trade for K Mitch. The problem though, Malik, is they don’t have the draft equity to kind of get them out of this hole and they’re still sitting on this Bradley Beal money nearly $20 million a year. It’s almost too late, two years later than when the CBA started to put the really teeth in. And they learned a valuable lesson. You can’t just go out and trade for high price players and give up the farm to do so here. And there’s a lot of digging to do so. And the Western Conference, as you know, is a bear. It is a bear to get into that top 10. And unfortunately, I think Phoenix is going to re find the realization that they’re just not one of those top 10 teams this year. So, you talked to to coaches and to GMs and folks around the league in the process of putting all of this together. Tim, what do you think he should be looking at this season to to be put around him to continue to feel good about this extension that he just signed? Well, I mean, to me, it’s a question about what does Devin Booker want, right? If Devin Booker wants to spend his career with the Phoenix Suns and to try to be, you know, go down as the best player in the history of the Suns franchise, I think that’s a perfectly honorable thing to do. We just saw Dame Lawler spend a whole bunch of time with Portland. he’s going to go down as probably the best player to ever play for the Blazers. Like, that’s a cool legacy to have, but if he wants to be a guy who has a chance to compete for championships, let’s just be honest. In the in his prime of his career, that’s not going to happen with the Phoenix Suns. There’s way too much work to do. As Bobby Mark said, it’s good that they ripped the band-aid off. They had to rip the band-aid off and stop digging. That’s the first way to get yourself out of a problem. The problem is they’ve dug a hole the size of the Grand Canyon. So, now to get out of it, it’s just going to literally just going to take time, even if they do everything right. So, like I said, to me, this is about what does Devin want his career to be. Yeah. He wants to be a one player, a one team player, and he wants to spend his career with the Suns. Yep. I think that’s great. But if he does want to be a guy that’s competing at the highest level, it’s hard for me to see a realistic path that happening with the Suns. Park, you’ve been a fan of Devin Booker over the years. Last word on this. Well, I just want to see his leadership elevate, right? We heard last season after he came back from the Olympics, he talked about how he wanted to be a better leader. Well, we haven’t seen that. We haven’t witnessed that yet. And now with him having the keys to it, not having any distractions, he have a nice young coach on the sideline. He have some guys that are going to be stars in their role. Obviously, they drafted well, getting a center, athletic big that could protect the basket, be a live threat at the basket. It’s going to take time for him to grow. Like, how are you going to guide and lead a Jaylen Green? The way that CP3 took Devin Booker under his wing, it’s time for him to show up and show out. No more talking. Let the game do the talking and also show that this organization has a foundation and that it’s not it’s not built on sand. We are going to have governor sink. At first I thought you said sin. I said does he say built on sin or built on sand? The governor of both the sun and the suns and the mercury joins us now. Matt Ishbia, thank you so much for taking the time to join the show. We really appreciate you. Good to be here. Well, the Phoenix Mercury, let’s start there because that come from behind overtime victory against the Minnesota Links on Tuesday. It tied the series at 1-1. The moment that Sammy Whitam hit that shot. C can you just reenact your reaction to that three that she hit at the end of regulation? Yeah, that was exciting. I was with my daughter and my son, both my kids, and we high five and we’re excited. But what a what a great play by her. But just love the resilience coming back and competing. Um, the team never gave up, down by 20 in the third quarter and and they never gave up and that was a big win. It was fun to watch. It was one of the biggest comebacks that we have seen in the WNBA playoffs. It was super exciting. We were going crazy in the studio. I really think that that is going to turn into a very interesting series. I’m excited to see the rest of it play out. You are very busy, Matt. I want to shift over to the Phoenix Suns now and specifically talk a little bit about the culture in your front office. Right. Because in less than a year, the Phoenix Suns, they’ve been sued six times, right? They’ve ranged from refusing access to internal documents, discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and wrongful termination. So, I I just wanted to know what is the message that you’re sending to your employees right now amidst these lawsuits while you’re also trying to manage a basketball team. Yeah, you know, as you know, Malikica, obviously, anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason they want, for anything they want. How many lawsuits have we actually lost? The answer is zero. How many will we lose? Zero. Like the difference between us and everyone else. First off, I don’t have to say anything of our employees or our team members. They all know. They’re all part of it. They love the culture, the organization we build. Um, but anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. The way I look at it a little differently than other people is we don’t settle. We don’t settle with someone. You want to say, “Give me $30,000 and I won’t file a lawsuit.” I said, “File a lawsuit. We didn’t do anything wrong. If we do something wrong, we take care of people, but I’m not going to be leveraged by people.” And so, if someone files a lawsuit, a lot of this from the previous uh ownership in previous times before I was even an owner, but either way, we do right by our people all the time. and I feel really great about our front office, our organization in general, the both the men’s and women’s side. You inherited a culture that you and I sat down exactly two years ago and you told me that you were working to change and I do understand that that that takes time. But in that same interview, it was at Suns Media Day if I’m not mistaken in your first year as owner of the team. You had just embarked right on the Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, let’s call it experiment. And in that interview, you predicted a championship. And I understand that hindsight is 2020, but what did you learn from that experience? Well, I learned that we didn’t win a championship. We didn’t get that one right. But the truth is is we learned a lot. You know, I didn’t do a good enough job setting the identity and the culture. And you know what? You can’t just trade and we made some trades for some talented players. They didn’t fit the right way for our organization, not just on the court, but also off the court and the way we’re building this. And so now we’re doing a little differently. We have a franchise player in Deon Booker. I love our team. We have an ascending team, young, hungry, grinded out team. And we’re excited for how we play this year, but also how we build not only this year, but next year and the year after. And I’m really excited about what we’ve got now. And we’ve moved on beyond that uh that experiment and we’re moving forward with a franchise player and a lot of great pieces and a lot of great players around him. Matt, our our senior insider Shams Shirana is here with me as well. Uh Shams, I know you wanted to to ask a question sort of looking at that time and looking forward as well. Yeah, Matt, in June, you guys made a blockbuster deal, traded away Kevin Durant to Houston. You guys picked up several players. What went into that decision moving Kevin Durant and then how do you view those players coming in and what you guys have acquired to kind of set this new stage for the Suns? Yeah, well, we’re really excited about the players we got. You know, uh Kevin Durant’s a great player. There’s no one that can ever question that. Just wasn’t a fit for what we’re doing going forward. Obviously, he’s had an amazing career, but he’s not a fit for what we’re going to do going forward. And we got great players back with Dylan Brooks, tough-minded, winning type guy. We love that. That’s what we have to build out here because Jaylen Green 23-year-old upside leading scoreer on and played all 82 games last year. We love Jaylen Green but then we got the 10th pick and come on Malawash we’re excited and with the other picks we end up getting Rasher Fleming Kobe Brad we got five players and we love what we’ve got for it. So we’re looking forward not looking back obviously it didn’t work with Kevin we wish him the best but for us going forward we love the guys we got we love what we’re building and it takes time. It’s not going to happen overnight but we feel great about what we’ve got here in Phoenix going forward. How do you use his star star power and what you’ve built from from a commitment level to build this next championship team in Phoenix and allow him to get back to the finals? Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s the goal. You know, he’s a 28-year-old franchise player, all-time leading scorer in Phoenix. And the best part is he wants to be here just like we want him here. And so, he’s been here his whole career hoping he’s going to be here for the rest of his career, too, doing great things, competing, and it’s our job to build the right team around him. And it’s his job to lead them. Has he, you know, doubled down to you behind closed doors? He’s been clear that Phoenix means a lot to him, but this team has changed a lot in his tenure. He’s seen so many head coaches in his time with the Suns here. Has he said to you behind closed doors that he still wants to play his entire career in Phoenix? Absolutely. Devin wants to be here. We want Devin here. He’s been he’s been part of it for the whole time. I talk to Devin all the time. Um we’re very aligned on what we believe and how we want to build this. And hey, listen, we’ve tried some things and they haven’t worked, but he knows that I care and that we want to win and we have the same goals and mindset. He’s one of the best players in the NBA and we want to continue to help him and so we’re going to try to win and compete at the highest level and we’re completely aligned. Matt, I know this is an incredibly busy day for you. We really appreciate the time, the best of luck this season, both the Mercury, the end of the season and for the Phoenix Suns for the duration of the season. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is what we mean when we say busy guy. Earlier this week, he also announced that Steve Nash is formally joining the Suns as a senior adviser and will help define our future for years to come.

On NBA Today, Bobby Marks, Tim Bontemps and Kendrick Perkins join Malika Andrews to discuss their expectations for Devin Booker, Jalen Green & the Phoenix Suns this NBA season.

0:00 Suns media day
1:40 Devin Booker is on the clock?
4:17 Bobby Marks has good news
7:36 Mat Ishbia interview

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