Ex-Phoenix Suns majority owner Robert Sarver apparently wanted to flip four-time All-Star combo guard Devin Booker, long before he had made even one All-Star squad, for a rival standout.

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During a recent conversation with Marques and Kris Johnson on their Milwaukee Bucks podcast “Hear District,” former Suns head coach Earl Watson revealed that he found out, during a late-night encounter with Sarver, that the club’s then-owner wanted to ditch a pre-All-Star Booker in exchange for an older, more proven commodity in then-Chicago Bulls All-Star small forward Jimmy Butler.

Now an assistant coach with the San Diego Toreros, Watson explained how it all went down. Watson was elevated to an interim head coaching role with the Suns midway through the 2015-16 season after Phoenix fired Jeff Hornacek.

Booker was still a fresh-faced rookie out of the University of Kentucky when Watson took over the franchise. He wouldn’t become an All-Star until the 2019-20 season, at which point Watson was long gone. He’s on track to make his fifth All-Star team this season, barring an injury.

“It’s February 2017. Jimmy Butler is in Chicago with Hoiberg,” Watson said. “Hoiberg is mild-tempered, mild-mannered. But Jimmy’s going at Hoiberg in the middle of the game, y’all know Jimmy. And I’m coaching the game, Kris and somewhere, somehow thinking, ‘I could really do something with that dog!’ We’re on the road trip, we land. Sarver sends me a text, ‘Come to my house immediately.’

“I’m not trying to go to nobody’s house at no two in the morning, bruh. I pull up to the house. It’s Sarver, it’s McDonough. And [then-team president] Ryan McDonough kinda gave me a look like, ‘Here goes some bulls—,’ right? So I sit down, and he goes, ‘We have a trade.’ So I go, ‘What’s the trade?’ He goes, ‘We have a trade for Devin. We’re gonna send Devin to Chicago for Jimmy Butler.’ Kris, in that moment, I am the biggest Devin Booker advocate. It could’ve changed my entire coaching trajectory.”

By this point, Butler — who’s six years older than Booker — was already an established All-Star, stewarding a rudderless Bulls team struggling to carve out an identity between Butler, aging former All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, and younger pieces like Denzel Valentine, Nikola Mirotic and Bobby Portis.

But even while trapped on that frustrating Chicago roster, Butler was clearly a two-way superstar just waiting to be unleashed with a stronger supporting cast. Earl Watson, however, was convinced that Booker was worth retaining, even in just his second pro season.

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“Man, I really [thought] the kid could be one of the greatest players to ever play. And I sat there and I watched the kid work. I’m in the gym with the kid. In that moment, Kris — and this was the beginning of the end of me in Phoenix — I said: ‘If you trade Devin Booker, I am resigning tonight.’ So we go back and forth. I don’t want to be the coach that traded, potentially, one of the best two guards. I believe he had that potential, he had superstar potential,” Watson explained. “And in that moment, Sarver said, ‘If we don’t trade him, we’re going to try to get the No. 1 pick, and your coaching record will be shot. And I rolled with that.”

During the parts of three seasons they spent under Watson, the Suns went 33-85. He was let go by Sarver just three games into 2017-18.

Following a bombshell report from ESPN’s Baxter Holmes and a subsequent NBA investigation, Sarver was forced to sell his ownership stakes in both the Suns and their sister WNBA squad, the Phoenix Mercury. Sarver sold the franchises to Mat and Justin Ishbia for $4 billion during the 2022-23 season, quite the return on investment.

There’s been a happy ending to both Booker and Butler’s stories. Both players have appeared in at least one NBA Finals as the best or second-best contributor (Chris Paul may have earned that distinction with Phoenix, although Butler was clearly the best guy on the Miami Heat, years later), and both do seem well on their way to Hall of Fame careers. Neither has won it all yet. The Oklahoma City, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons feel like the heavy favorite to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy at the end of the season.

But there’s always next year.

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