No one lived up to the comparisons to Kobe Bryant. This includes Devin Booker.
The Phoenix Suns guard has been compared to Bryant — even though he didn’t like it — ever since he joined the NBA. Their careers overlapped during his rookie year and Bryant’s farewell tour, with Booker scoring 28 points against the Los Angeles Lakers in his first and only matchup against the legendary guard.
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In a sign of respect, the Black Mamba signed Booker’s Kobe 11s with the words “Be Legendary,” stamping his faith in the then-19-year-old.
Booker has immortalized those words with a tattoo on his forearm — serving as a reminder and a declaration from one of the greatest to ever do it.
“Kobe’s last year was my first year in the NBA, and he left me with a lot of great words and people always told me that he wasn’t so open to everybody, and I think I was one of the very few that, you know, he invited me to Gigi’s basketball tournament here in Arizona to spend time with the girls. And just being around him, man, he was super punctual, and he worked the hardest out of everybody,” said Booker in an interview with Bryanna Sompayrac.
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Book embraced Kobe’s “Mamba Mentality”
The influence Bryant had on Booker was evident from the beginning. Fans who watched the Suns guard from the start saw glimpses of the Lakers legend in every jumper Booker shot.
However, he revealed that he wasn’t even a Kobe fan at first.
“Honestly, growing up in Michigan, being a Pistons fan, we weren’t the biggest fans of Kobe. We played them in the Finals, and we ended up beating them. So that was a big part of my childhood, but then just — everybody respected him,” Booker said.
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“You might not have liked him when he played, but you respected the mentality. You respected the competitiveness,” he added.
It wasn’t until their workouts together in the offseasons that followed their first matchup that Booker began to admire the Lakers legend.
And those workouts did wonders for him.
Booker had developed into one of the league’s brightest stars, highlighted by becoming the youngest player to score 70 points in an NBA game in 2017, and also the most in a single game — at that time — since Bryant scored 81 points in 2006.
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Booker’s growth culminated in a monstrous playoff run in 2021, where he averaged 27.3 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.5 assists to lead the Suns to their first Finals appearance since 1993. Despite his 40-point performances in Games 4 and 5, Phoenix lost the series in six games to the Milwaukee Bucks. But it was more than enough proof that Booker had demonstrated the same killer instinct that his late mentor had.
Continuing Bryant’s legacy
Through the Suns’ roster changes over the years, Booker has remained the only constant. After a failed superteam experiment with Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, he is now a lone star in Phoenix.
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That said, his new teammates, Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green, although not as dangerous offensively as Durant and Beal, have been a perfect complement to his scoring prowess. As a result, the Suns sit in sixth place in the West with an 11-7 record.
Booker’s scoring remains elite — he’s averaging 26.4 points in the 2025-26 NBA season. He has also developed into a great playmaker, arguably better than Bryant, averaging 6.9 assists per game.
Will that be enough for Booker to make the Suns a legitimate contender in the West? It’s hard to say. Still, armed with Bryant’s lessons on heart, he continues to strive for ultimate glory with the team that drafted him.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Nov 25, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.