PHOENIX – It’s Devin Booker’s Phoenix Suns team now whether he wants it to be or not. He’s the lone star remaining after the Suns shed Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant during the offseason.
By several key metrics, he is responding with personal bests in points per game, field goal percentage and three-point percentage through the first 11 games.
Booker’s play under a new untried coach and equally inexperienced general manager has been promising for the whole team.
The Suns have already gone up-tempo, giving Booker’s new sidekick Jalen Green, a blur in the open floor acquired in the Durant trade, the best opportunity to succeed in his new home. With Green barely seeing the floor because of a strained right hamstring, the team is only No. 23 in pace for now. But Booker and Co. are sharing the ball a lot more under coach Jordan Ott than they did during a dismal 2024-25 season, with a Locomotion Offense that has everyone on the floor involved.
“There are a lot of differences out there,” Booker said in an interview after Monday night’s 121-98 wipeout of New Orleans at newly christened Mortgage Matchup Center. “Different players. Different coaching staff. It’s a whole new vibe.”
The Suns were first in the NBA last season with a $366.6 million payroll and tax bill, and thus the biggest bust when they failed to make the playoffs, costing coach Mike Budenholzer his job.
It’s certainly early, but artistically, at least, this campaign has been a big difference from last season’s 36-46 disaster in which the Suns opened 8-1 and won 28 games the rest of the way, causing a cataclysmic shift in the franchise.
“We’ve washed last season,” Booker said, his club at 6-5, 5-1 at home. “It was tough on the whole city. But we feel rejuvenated.”
The Suns finished last season at the polar opposite of their opening, closing 1-9. That collapse included a 39-point loss to Houston and 38-point loss to Golden State, both at home. Durant missed 20 games, including the last seven because of a left ankle injury. And after the trade deadline when rumors had him returning to the Warriors, he often appeared checked out.
He was subsequently traded to the Houston Rockets, where he’s averaging 25 points per game, in a seven-team deal that netted Green and forward Dillon Brooks.
After joining Phoenix in an ill-fated deal with the Washington Wizards, Beal was missing in action mostly because of injuries and played in 106 of a possible 164 games in his two-season tenure. The Suns bought out the remainder of his contract, and he signed for $5.4 million this season with the Los Angeles Clippers, where he’s had little impact in a career-low 20 minutes per game.
“I was very disappointed in last season,” Suns owner Mat Ishbia said during his media day press conference. “It wasn’t fun to watch. We’ve made a lot of changes from the front office to the players. It starts with me. I took the blame.”
When the Clippers lost to the Suns, 115-102, in Phoenix last Thursday, Beal was mercilessly booed every time he touched the ball, punctuating the point that “things are a lot better for me in Los Angeles,” he said, the sell-out crowd acknowledging he’s still the face of the Suns’ recent failures.
The Suns followed that game up with another win over the Clippers Saturday at the Intuit Dome, snapping a 12-game road losing streak dating back to last March 9. Beal had 17 points in the two games against the Suns and then sat out Monday night against Atlanta, already missing his fifth of the team’s first 10 games. Clippers coach Ty Lue indicated after that contest Beal has a left hip injury and may miss multiple games. Where have we heard that before?
To be sure, the Suns this season, despite the financial restructuring, are still eighth in the league with a $207.9 million payroll, $52.3 million over the cap, and only a $821,004 tax bill. Last season, Booker, Beal and Durant earned $150.6 million between them, which was untenable considering the results.
This season, Booker is the biggest chunk of the payroll at $53.1 million. Because of cap rules, when the Suns traded Durant at $54.7 million they had to take back at least two players that added up to the same salary. Those two are Green at $33.6 million and Brooks at $21.1 million.
At 29 now, Booker’s signed through the 2029-30 season to a contract that keeps accelerating to a $69.2 million player option.
He’s essentially a Sun for life, content to play his entire career in Phoenix when his famous No. 1 ultimately goes up in the rafters and into the Ring of Honor with the rest of the local greats. Unlike the renegade Durant, eighth overall in NBA scoring with 30,794 points but with his fifth club, Booker is content to stay put. He’s the Suns’ all-time leader with 16,764 points.
Winning the club’s first NBA title is important, but not essential to all that. At the end of last season’s debacle, Booker said he had to “figure out ways how to win games at all costs and try to power my will on the other team and my team at the same time. Being a leader, using my voice more.”
He was asked Monday night whether that’s starting to come to pass so early in another season—or with the current mix of role players, does it even have to?
“I’m still the same person,” he said. “The good teams I’ve been on you realize there’s never one leader. It changes from night to night. You do it as a collective group. For me, you want to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. That’s what we’re all doing. Everyone has bought in.”
Booker is a nice player now in his 11th season, bordering on superstar status with four All-Star appearances and two All-NBA nods, including First-Team All-NBA in 2021-22. He’s also been a heavy contributor to Team USA as they won the last two Olympic gold medals.
He’s best moving off the ball through pick and rolls to set up his sweet mid-range jumper, and his distribution has vastly improved since he entered the league, with his assists per game jumping from below five in each of his first three seasons to 6.6 over the past four.
If there’s a slight knock, he isn’t prolific on the boards for a guard with above average size at 6-foot-5. Thus, he’s never had a regular season triple-double in 684 games, a real anomaly for his type of player. His only career triple-double was in 2021 against the Clippers during the playoffs.
“Yeah, I’ve never rebounded to my potential,” said Booker, whose career average is four rebounds and 5.3 assists to go along with 24.5 points. “I’ve had [big men] who’d just tell me to get out of the way.”
He came close to a triple-double on Saturday night in LA with 21 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists. His teammates joked with him and pushed him as the game wound down to no avail.
Now with Green out for at least a possible two months after re-aggravating his hamstring injury in just his second appearance of the season, Booker is going to be asked to do more.
“We just want him to be aggressive,” Ott said. “He’s going to be a hub to everything we do offensively.”
It’s about time.