Check out Devin Booker’s best plays this season after he was named an All-Star reserve.
The NBA trade deadline is much like the start of free agency, these twin days of transition, where players bounce from team to team, changing uniforms before their general managers change their minds. Superstars, starters, fringe rotational players, all of them are prime for relocation, some by choice, others not.
And then there’s Devin Booker. Tomorrow morning at sunrise, he will still be a Phoenix Sun. This is a guarantee and has been for a decade.
Booker is the rare player to never get circulated in trade talk and never send Bat-Signals about wanting to flee in free agency. To stay in one place for this long during the era of player movement is tricky and unusual, like a lit candle surviving a birthday party.
Wait … he’s now in his 11th season, all with one team?
The number of active players to stick with a single franchise for at least 10 seasons can fit in a shot glass: Stephen Curry and Draymond Green with the Golden State Warriors, Joel Embiid with the Philadelphia 76ers, Nikola Jokić with the Denver Nuggets, Jaylen Brown is two months away from qualifying with the Boston Celtics and Giannis Antetokounmpo with the Milwaukee Bucks (although, in his case, you wonder for how much longer).
Booker, at the still-young age of 29, is the definition of endurance, patience and … loyalty? That last word is so elusive in professional sports, and yet Booker and the Suns are joined together, perhaps til retirement do they part.
Devin Booker nails a triple from the left corner to surpass Walter Davis and claim the top spot on the Suns’ career points leaderboard.
His time in Phoenix has been marked by administrative changes, rebuilds, reinventions, transitions, roster revamps, title contention, missed playoffs and four seasons of 24 or fewer wins. You name it … Booker has survived to tell about it.
“When I started, we were at the bottom,” he said. “Later, I went to the Finals, two games away from winning it all. Obviously, the last two years, those have been some down years. I’ve stuck with it through thick and thin. We’re on a great trajectory right now. Especially after our last two years. We have a lot of youth, we have a lot of young players with potential growth and at the same time we have players who are ready to play great right now.”
Yes, this season … this gives him hope, yet again. The reconfigured Suns are one of the league’s biggest surprises, especially after losing Durant last summer and the cache he carried. A new coach — again — and a new direction, also again, agrees with Booker.
They’re squarely in the hunt for a playoff spot in the ultra-competitive Western Conference. Jordan Ott, a first-time coach, is squeezing results from a team with only one All-Star (that’s Booker). This team is mainly comprised of career role players, yet the Suns are rolling. They were 11 games over .500 until Booker’s ankle sprain on Jan. 25 sent him to the bench for a week.
Booker is averaging 25.4 points and 6.2 assists per game, stats on par with his career, while his value once again goes beyond mere numbers.
“How he thinks is different,” said Ott. “He’s so intentional with everything he does. How he behaves, how he acts every day, is just different. He has all the right stuff. And on the court, it’s the same thing.
“He has a routine, he wants to get better and he shows up every game to play as hard as he can, defensively. Offensively does a great job reading the defense and involving his teammates. He just plays the right way.”
And he plays for one team, still.
Here, on trade deadline day, are some notable and curious player movements (to contrast Booker):
Dennis Schröder, just shipped from Sacramento to Cleveland the other day, is the second-most traded player in league history behind Trevor Ariza. Schroder is on his 11th team.
Russell Westbrook spent his first 11 seasons with Oklahoma City. He’s now on his sixth team in the last seven seasons, his time traveling down on the other side of the hill picking up speed.
Westbrook’s former (and future Hall of Fame) teammates in OKC, Kevin Durant and James Harden, have played for a combined eight teams since leaving, and Harden will likely move again.
And most famously, LeBron James spent two tours in Cleveland, one each in Miami and L.A. with the Lakers, and future whereabouts are currently unknown.
Even players once assumed would never wear a different uniform did swap during this age of player movement: Damian Lillard (from Portland to Milwaukee), the retired Dwyane Wade (Miami to Chicago to Cleveland to Miami), and Luka Dončić (well, you know what happened there) and more.
But Booker has survived all that activity swirling around him on the outside, eight coaches, two ownership changes, a tsunami of teammates and who knows how many philosophical changes. The Suns have long viewed Booker rightly as a tremendous talent and evidently an irreplaceable one.
Now, some context: It helps when the Suns gave him many millions to think twice about free agency. When the Suns’ last great experiment, with Durant and Bradley Beal, blew up unspectacularly, those two were jettisoned. Then the Suns extended Booker’s contract by two years and $145 million last summer. That buys lots of loyalty.
Highlights from Devin Booker’s 31-point performance against the New York Knicks.
Yet Booker was already wealthy. His attachment to the franchise and the city proves to still be irresistible to him, and he’s reinvigorated by this season so far.
“People are surprised,” he said. “I’m not surprised. We had a long training camp. We got the team together before training camp. Obviously, you hear the expectations from everybody else on the outside, but everybody works on this team. Coaches came in and they’re great to be a part of. We came in to get better every day, whether you won or lost and that’s a good telltale sign.”
Booker hasn’t reached 30 yet, but as the most accomplished player on this latest reincarnation, he’s in a firm position of leadership, and he welcomes that role.
“It’s my second nature,” he said. “I realize there are different forms of leadership. You can lead by example and by what you do, and by voice. I’ve developed relationships with these guys, kind of taken their temperature first to see what can work best for each player in how I approach them.”
Also, Booker is in step with Mat Ishbia, the owner, and Brian Gregory, the new general manager, as they prepare to plot a new path — one that aims to maximize Booker’s prime years. After shedding big contracts, the Suns will soon be positioned to pounce when a sensible trade or free agent comes along.
“My communication with the organization has always been at a high level,” he said. “They’ve entrusted me, so that’s a great honor to have, to have the trust of your organization.”
About player movement: Booker doesn’t compare his stability with others who went the nomadic route. Every player’s situation is different. Perhaps if Booker were in another setting, he would have bags packed.
“What you realize is everybody blames the players in these situations,” he said, “but it’s not always up to the players. Luka Dončić probably thought he would be in Dallas forever. It’s two-sided. Organizations are either win-now or build-their-young-core now. If you don’t fit into those two boxes, it’s kind of hard to adjust.”
When teams don’t meet expectations set by ownership, changes are usually imminent. If players don’t feel fulfilled financially and approach free agency, they jump. If they feel they can win elsewhere, they ask to be traded. It’s all so delicate based on so many factors. Ultimately, it’s all about stars, management and ownership being aligned in their goals.
“Our situation, culture and environment are important in this league,” Booker said. “You want to be somewhere where everybody’s on the same page, where everybody wants to win. I can tell you that there are no ulterior motives going on here. Everybody here wants to win.”
Surprisingly, with Jalen Green, expected to be the No. 2 scorer here in his first season with Phoenix, missing 45 games with injury, the Suns have prospered.
Many in the rotation discovered their next level: Dillon Brooks is scoring more than ever, Collin Gillespie is vastly improved at point guard and the chemistry overall is bubbling, reflecting Booker’s enthusiasm.
No one’s sure where this latest version of the Devin Booker-led Suns is headed. But we know who isn’t going anywhere.
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Shaun Powell has covered the NBA since 1985. You can e-mail him at spowell@nba.com, find his archive here and follow him on X.