With just one night and two games in the books for this young NBA season so far, it’s obviously too early to make any sweeping proclamations about much of anything.
Still, the Suns—incredibly talented with three bona fide star wing scorers, but extremely thin at the point-guard spot after trading away Chris Paul—have to feel encouraged at extremely early returns from Devin Booker serving as the floor general in the team’s 108–104 season-opening victory at Golden State.
In particular, Booker gracefully guided the offense over the final 90 seconds, collecting assists on three consecutive possessions to three different teammates to ultimately ice the contest.
He swung a gutsy, crosscourt jump-pass to an open Josh Okogie in the left corner for a triple as the shot clock was expiring to push Phoenix’s lead to four, 103–99. The following play, Booker snaked in between two defenders before swinging a pass to the opposite side of the floor for Eric Gordon, who’d been ice cold, but found the distance on this three-point try to put the Suns up five, 106–101. Then, with the Warriors sending a pair of solid defenders to defend Booker at the top of the arc—a no-no because of how glaringly open it will inevitably leave someone else—Booker rose as if he planned to shoot before dropping off an offering for new teammate Jusuf Nurkić, who’d dutifully rolled to the basket for the impressive finish.
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Three plays. Three baskets. None of which were scored by the club’s big three. (Hell, Bradley Beal, suffering from lower-back tightness, didn’t even play Tuesday.) All of which were orchestrated by Booker.
The performance, which also saw Booker put down 32 points and a grand total of eight assists, would have been fantastic for anyone. But it was particularly impressive in light of the questions about Phoenix that were raised for much of the offseason. Chief among those questions: Would the Suns be able to generate enough fluid offense with a trio of wing scorers but no true veteran point guard? In particular, there were 69 players in the league last season who participated in at least 3,000 offensive possessions last season and managed to log an assist rate of at least 20% in those plays. According to NBA.com’s John Schuhmann, the Suns entered this season as the only team without at least one such player on their roster.
This isn’t to suggest that distinction won’t ever make a difference. After all, Paul had an otherworldly 6.67-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio last season in clutch scenarios, where the score was separated by five points or fewer in the final five minutes of play. Booker, by comparison, had a 1.5-to-1 ratio in those moments. (Kevin Durant, as a member of the Nets last season, had a 1:1 ratio, with just four assists and four turnovers.)
Still, there’s a reason Frank Vogel and the Suns believed in Booker running the show this season to begin with. Since his entry into the league in 2015, he’s shown considerable progression as a passer—much in the same way that wings Jayson Tatum and, before him, Kawhi Leonard have in recent years. He had a career-high assist percentage (meaning the percentage of teammate’s baskets he set up while on the floor) of 34.1% in ’18–19, then followed that up with a 30% assist percentage in ’19–20. His numbers fell quite a bit in the seasons afterward, but much, if not all, of that can be linked to playing alongside Paul, which allowed Booker to serve as a top-flight scorer.
If Booker can continue to distribute the way he did Tuesday night—especially without Beal being on the floor yet—the question of “Who’s the Suns’ point guard?” may fade into the background until the postseason. Because it’s becoming clearer that Booker is capable of holding down that role for now.
