After a November where the team’s secondary scoring option logged only 30 minutes and a handful of others missed time, the annual soft tissue setback for Devin Booker arrived Monday night against the Lakers. He opened the game on fire with 11 points in the first quarter, then had to exit with a groin issue. It feels like we have been waiting for this moment, and the levee finally gave way. There are plenty of reasons for that feeling.
Booker has been carrying the stress created by everyone else’s soft tissue problems. Jalen Green’s hamstring. Grayson Allen’s bruised hip. Mark Williams’ rest nights. The production was not there for him in November, sure, but when you are the primary scoring option, every defense locks in and drags each possession into a wrestling match. That was his month in a nutshell.
The numbers dipped, but the effort never did. That effort has been the most important thing about Booker this season. This Suns team has built its foundation on effort, and after the roster retool this summer, there were questions about how much Booker would commit to the new direction. He was going to be asked to play with more grit on the defensive end, to take on a heavier load there. And sure enough, he has leaned into it. Not every former All-Star would. I can think of a guard not too long ago who was asked to play a Jrue Holiday-type role and was perplexed and offended at the suggestion.
But here we are. Devin Booker is hurt again. It is not the first time. It will not be the last. And it is unfortunate.
But here is where I take off my “well that is the way it is” cap and put on my fanalyst cap. At the end of the day, this is a blog site, and I do more than report what happens. I give my opinion, for better or worse. I know I am not the first to make this point, so forgive the repetition. This space is my sounding board, so sound off I shall.
The NBA has a problem. Period. It feels like an epidemic. Like so many things in this country right now, the league is overpriced and following the beat of profitability in a way that hurts the product. They have become the basketball version of Chipotle, where two burrito bowls and two sodas cost $52. The product suffers. The bottom line thrives. That is the priority.
Look around. How many teams have injured stars right now? How many key players have spent more time in street clothes than in uniform?
When you see graphics like the ones below, it is stunning that there is not a larger push to figure out how to keep players healthy in this league.
Spotrac.com
Yet the league still expects people to show up and spend their hard-earned money to see their teams. Yet they still want fans to juggle five different subscriptions to consume the product. It is a joke.
I understand that injuries happen in sports. Twisted ankles happen when someone lands wrong in the lane and we see it often. That is part of the deal.
What I am talking about are the issues Devin Booker is dealing with now. Soft tissue problems. Pulled groins. Pulled hamstrings. The rise of Achilles injuries that feels like its own storm cloud. These are not fluke plays. These are the result of fatigue that builds and builds. No matter how many high-tech toys players use for recovery, the pace of the modern game, paired with the demands of analytic efficiency, creates nonstop physical wear.
I look around at other sports and I see injuries there too. It comes with competition. But how often do you see this many key players across a league sidelined at the same time? In basketball, it happens all the time.
Devin Booker becomes another casualty in a long stretch of profit-driven mismanagement of assets. He, like so many others in this league, becomes an under stuffed burrito bowl handed out by a business that keeps charging more for less.
No, I do not have the answers. I am a fanalyst, nothing more. But I believe it starts with scheduling.
I made this point a couple days ago, and I will fortify it. The Suns have played 7 games in 11 nights. Then, after facing the Lakers last night, they have one game in the next 7 days. What is that? You cannot tell me there is no room to spread this thing out.
I have written before that the league has the schedule wrong. They should start in December and end in August. They could own the summer every summer with the NBA Finals.
The regular season runs from mid-October to mid-April. Six months. You can stretch that by two or three weeks and give these players real rest days. I do not mind the 82-game format. What I mind is the way it is arranged.
Right now, the Phoenix Suns play 82 games in 172 days. Yet somehow they have 16 back-to-backs. Add a little length to the calendar by choosing a Christmas start, run your season through the end of June, then take July and August for your postseason. Maybe the players get more rest. Maybe the product improves. Maybe we finally get a league that takes care of the people who make this sport beautiful. The ones who deliver the excitement. The athleticism. The ballet.
For a league that claims to be so goddamn innovative, a league that keeps tossing new tournaments into the mix whenever it can, it feels like they still cannot see the forest for the trees.
So Devin Booker, like many other players across the league, will most likely spend time nursing a fatigue-based injury born from piss poor scheduling and the extra effort he has been forced to burn because of the soft tissue issues around him. Great.
Remember those NBA Cares commercials? No, they do not. The league cares about the bottom line. They care about making sure every financial quarter outperforms the last. It is not about the players. It is not about the product. It is about the profit. Oh well, that is the way it is, right? Is there a game tonight? Cool. Let me find out which streaming service I need to throw twelve bucks at so I can watch it.