Show Devin Booker the respect he deserves

It is long overdue for the sports world to put some respect on Devin Booker’s name. Despite doing nearly everything that other big stars have done both on and off the court (and many things they haven’t), Book still isn’t routinely listed as one of the NBA’s top stars, and it makes no sense. He doesn’t get ESPN love, he gets painfully fewer All-Star votes than worse players, and outside of Phoenix and Kentucky, there aren’t too many Booker jerseys running around.

LeBron James, the biggest name in the game, pointed out this fact after Book’s initial All-Star snub in 2021, calling him the most disrespected player in the league. “Simple as that.”

Devin Booker is the most disrespected player in our league!!! Simple as that.

— LeBron James (@KingJames) February 24, 2021

For someone who has followed his career, why Booker doesn’t get more national admiration is as puzzling as Cal not playing him more in the Final Four loss to Wisconsin in 2015. But let’s put aside our bias for just a bit and dive into why he emphatically deserves to be mentioned alongside every other NBA superstar and why this isn’t the case.

Book’s numbers don’t lie

Devin Booker turned 25 years old this season and has been a scoring machine in his first seven seasons in the league. Here is the list of the top seven players who have scored the most points in the NBA before the age of 25:

1. LeBon James
2. Kevin Durant
3. Carmello Anthony
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Tracy McGrady
6. Devin Booker
7. Giannis Antetokounmpo

Pretty good company.

Of those top seven players, Booker played in fewer games than all of them and averaged the second-fewest minutes per game. With less time on the court, Booker averaged 23 points per contest, which ranks fourth on this list behind James, Durrant, and Anthony.

Yet, if you asked the average fan to spout off who they think is on this list, very few would come up with Devin Booker.

It is not only an early hot start to his career where Booker shined. He finished in the top 15 in points per game each of the last four seasons and most recently finished eighth at 26.8. That’s two spots higher than league darling, Steph Curry.

That time he dropped 70

Then there was his 70-point game in 2017 against the Boston Celtics (with his Kentucky running mate Tyler Ulis on the floor). Booker became just the 11th player in NBA history to reach the 70-point milestone and the youngest ever to achieve it (and 60 too, for that matter).

And yet, writers were quick to diminish the historic accomplishment. Sports Illustrated called Booker a “looter in a riot” for this performance, essentially saying he took advantage of being the best player on a weak team in a meaningless end-of-season game that his team ultimately lost by double digits.

But if it was that easy, why hasn’t anyone else done it since? And why hadn’t anyone done it prior to him since 2006 when Kobe put up 81 and turned every witness into a worshiper.

When you type in “Booker 70 point game” into Google, the first suggestion in the “People Also Ask” section is, “Did Booker have a 70-point game?” as if it was a commonplace phrase people had to Google because their friend told them it was true and they didn’t believe it.

Off-the-court celebrity

Numbers alone, admittedly, don’t turn an NBA player into a superstar. They have to carry with them a bit of swagger that bridges the gap between a great professional athlete and a pop culture celebrity. Michael Jordan did it with shoes, Peyton Manning did it with commercials, and Shaquille O’Neal did it with a larger-than-life personality that put him in movies, rap albums, and TV studios.

Booker appears in very few commercials (though it may not feel that way for anyone who watched the NCAA tournament this year), and Hollywood is not about to cast him in Kazaam 2.

Booker may be getting a new shoe from Nike, but if his Instagram story a few days ago is a hint to its release, it might have a wow factor for different reasons. The ad Booker posted was a beat-up ole pair of kicks that looked to be from the 80s and gone through several grass mowings. The tag line was literally, “BORING” and the fine print talked about how a shoe should just be a shoe.

Book has a knack for being old school and liking vintage collectibles like 1960s Impalas and 1990s cameras, which is part of what makes him unique, but I don’t see kids standing in line at Foot Locker for this one.

He is, however, dating the most famous supermodel on Earth, Kendall Jenner, and has been for about two years. While she doesn’t frequent many Phoenix Suns games, Book does make consistent appearances on her Instagram account with 240 million followers. It’s hard to get more celebrity than intertwining yourself in a Kardashian romance.

Another holiday weekend, another Devin Booker-Kendall Jenner rendezvous in a nice vehicle. pic.twitter.com/dzlbYscOgp

— Valley of the Suns (@ValleyoftheSuns) July 5, 2020

On the less flashy side, Book is also a huge advocate for the Special Olympics, even being named an official ambassador after countless acts of goodwill toward the organization. Book has a special place in his heart for the physically challenged, as his sister lives with chromosome 22 deletion syndrome.

Typically, this type of charitable presence along with the fame that comes with dating one of the most popular humans on Earth while maintaining his own unique brand of old-school fashion would ratchet up someone’s superstardom, but for Book, there appears to be a glass ceiling he can’t quite break.

Lost in the desert

Part of the reason Book can’t seem to latch onto the mainstream like other players is due to playing in Phoenix. Even though the Valley of the Sun is considered the 11th largest TV market in America, games that start at 9:00 pm or 10:00 pm on the East Coast are typically reserved for the likes of the Los Angles Lakers and Golden State Warriors. He simply doesn’t get the national exposure he would if he played in California or east of the Mississippi.

Moreover, Booker played on absolutely abysmal teams during his first four seasons. Going into this fifth season, not a single one of his former teammates was on an NBA roster. Not a single one.

That “good player on a bad team” moniker has changed somewhat in the last two years with the Suns’ recent success, but a history of losing combined with general Phoenix weariness (in part due to their awful owner), led commentators to have little faith in the Suns despite their big number in the win column.

During last year’s playoffs, the excuse was they didn’t beat anyone with a full roster, and this season, talking heads all but rooted for the Suns to fail, claiming they weren’t as good as their regular-season record showed.

When the Suns went down in Game 7 against an inferior Dallas team thanks to yet another Chris Paul injury, turmoil with Deandre Ayton, and an underperforming Booker, they all felt validated with their pessimistic proclamations.

The more the Suns can string together winnings seasons and deep playoff runs, this perception, and thus that of Devin Booker, should change, but that tide won’t shift nearly as fast in the sand of the Phoenix desert as it would somewhere else.

They don’t put mid-range jumpers on a poster

Despite the history of losing in a less-than-optimal market, the main reason we don’t see SportsCenter give Book the Zion treatment, the LeBron admiration, or the Ja Morant fawning, is because they don’t make posters of guys shooting mid-range jumpers over people, and the mid-range is where Booker lives.

He ranked fourth in the league in mid-range jumper field goals this season, which could be partly based on Suns head coach Monty Williams’ system. The Suns led the league in shot attempts between 10 and 14 feet by a wide margin, but even before this season, Book thrived on the middy. He finished second in field goal attempts from this range last year, fourth in the two years prior, and fifth in the 2017-18 season.

In the era of Steph Curry shooting 30 footers and celebrating before they go in, and Ja Morant ending dudes’ careers who are foolish enough to attempt to take a charge while he drives the lane looking to throw it down, it is easy to see why Book’s mid-range clinic often misses highlight reels.

It’s not that he is incapable of 3-point excellence or throwing down some hammers. He won the 3-point contest in his first attempt and came in second in his only other entry. On top of that, he finished in the top 25 in 3-point baskets made per game this season, but much to the disdain of ESPN producers, each one ended with a smooth followthrough instead of a smooth dance move.

When it comes to dunking, there are more instances of him throwing it down a guy’s face than you might think. He posterized Pascal Siakam in the Disney bubble, dunked through Giannis’s contact in the Finals last year (though it came after a cheap whistle), and this season he embarrassed his friend, D’Angelo Russell, to give him 11,000 career points, making him the fourth-youngest to reach the milestone behind Kobe, Durant, and LeBron.

The problem, of course, is he does this kind of thing only a few times per year and players like Ja Morant do it a few times per week.

💥 Devin Booker CAUGHT A BODY named D'Angelo Russell 💥pic.twitter.com/Ea5MnI2Msf

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) March 24, 2022

The player’s player

Despite the lack of respect Devin Booker receives from everywhere else, the players around the league get it. After Book got robbed of an All-Star bid in the 2019-2020 season, Damian Lillard suffered an injury just before the break. When asked who should replace him in the game, Lillard did not hesitate. He said, “Hopefully somebody who should have been there and didn’t make it… hopefully, Devin Booker or somebody like that will get the spot.”

Whether the league listened to Dame or not, Booker indeed took his spot. The very next year, Booker still didn’t make the initial All-Star cut (leading to the aforementioned LeBron tweet) and it took yet another injury for him to come in as a reserve. This season, Booker received fewer votes than Klay Thompson, who didn’t even return from injury until January, but thankfully, he had enough to get in without someone getting hurt.

On top of raw talent, many players consider Booker one of the biggest on-court trash talkers in the league, but in a good way. Joel Embiid, who seems difficult to impress, gave Book a huge vow of respect when he said: “I don’t think many people know that [Booker] talks a lot! He’s always talking. Literally. But that’s the thing. I love that about these types of guys. They just know how good they are.”

Last year during the Suns’ playoff run, Chris Paul said of him, “[Book] is like an old man. He’s the oldest 24-year-old I’ve ever met in my life…The biggest thing, he knows the game.” That nod to a young man with an old soul was a compliment but probably also a reference to Booker’s penchant for the antique, be it cars, cameras, or clothes.

While the constant disrespect from fans and media, though slowly turning a corner, has to bother him, Booker can rest easy at night knowing he has earned the respect of his peers.