The Suns keep trying to rebuild, but their best hope for escaping the darkness lies in the player they drafted after trying to win.
The Phoenix Suns have tanked out twice within the past five years. In return they have a 20-year-old kid who looks like a potential superstar. This is how it is supposed to work, right?
If only it were that simple.
Devin Booker’s start to his second year in the NBA has been incredible. He dropped 38 points on Friday and 39 more on Sunday, both on the road. He’s the youngest-ever player to drop 38 in consecutive games. He’s averaging 23 points per game. An NBA All-Star bid — again, at age 20 — isn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities. The Suns are 2-5, and have little chance of being good due to a weak defense. But Booker gives them hope.
Booker is simultaneously evidence of the supreme importance of the NBA draft and evidence that tanking is no panacea. Like Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Paul Pierce, Dirk Nowitzki, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Kobe Bryant before him, Booker shows that you can find stars outside the top five if you do your homework and get a little lucky.
Booker was the No. 13 pick in 2015, coming to town in the wake of a regression season for Phoenix. You see, the Suns tried to tank a couple of years prior, but failed, and this is where it gets complicated.
The 2012-13 Suns were one of the worst teams in the league, and ended up with the fifth overall pick. The front office was turned over to Ryan McDonough and the Suns took Alex Len, a raw big man. McDonough jettisoned a trio of veterans — Marcin Gortat, Jared Dudley, and Luis Scola — picking up future assets and Eric Bledsoe in the swaps. The Suns were clearly getting younger. That usually always means worse. It didn’t here.
The 2013-14 Suns won 48 games, putting together one of the more inexplicable seasons in recent memory. The tank job was short-circuited by success as Goran Dragic and Bledsoe turned into a potent dual-threat attack and as a cast of supporting characters filled the gap. Those 48 wins weren’t enough for the No. 8 seed in a tough West, but the near-term future of the club looked much rosier. Would it cost the Suns their long-term future, though? As the best non-playoff team, the Suns picked No. 14 and McDonough chose T.J. Warren.
The next season went much worse, as the offseason signing of Isaiah Thomas created a problem for coach Jeff Hornacek. He couldn’t play all of his point guards enough. So at midseason, McDonough traded Dragic to Miami for picks, Thomas to Boston for a pick and a valuable Lakers pick to the Sixers in a three-teamer for Brandon Knight. Essentially, the Suns reversed the Thomas signing and swapped a pissed-off Dragic for the younger Knight. Phoenix finished the season a completely average team. They ended up with the No. 13 pick, which was used to take ... Devin Booker.
Things got worse in 2015-16 as Markieff Morris imploded after his twin brother had been traded. Hornacek lost the team and eventually his job. Around midseason, when Morris was traded for yet another pick, it became clear that for the second time in five years, the Suns would tank it out and amass a couple of high draft picks in a full rebuild. The first of those high picks were Dragan Bender (No. 4, taken with Phoenix’s own pick) and Marquese Chriss (taken No. 8 after Phoenix traded up using other acquired picks).
In the interim, Booker happened. His minutes and scoring numbers exploded after the All-Star break last season, and have continued to pop eyes this season. His defense is a, uh, work in progress and his shot efficiency isn’t quite rosy just yet. But the Suns have a young player who can create at will, shoot with confidence and light up legitimate NBA defenders.
These kind of players usually figure out how to play passable defense and how to boost their shooting percentages. Hard work and a commitment to drawing fouls are often the recipe. James Harden is Booker’s likely model for success, and that’s wholly attainable barring injury or poor work ethic. Booker is well beyond where Harden was at age 20.
We’ll see what Bender and Chriss become; Len certainly looks nothing like a star as he approaches the end of his rookie contract. But what serendipity there is in the Suns’ most promising prospect coming out of the one season Phoenix entered believing it had a realistic shot at making a playoff run. Just another wrinkle in the annals of NBA team-building.