The Weekside: Devin Booker, the understated future superstar in this rookie class

D’Angelo Russell, who the Los Angeles Lakers took second overall in the 2015 NBA Draft, is trapped in a uniquely Millennial, uniquely 2016 quagmire. It is rooted in his inability to understand why videotaping a friend who is divulging deeply personal secrets is an awful idea.

The third overall pick, Philadelphia 76ers center Jahlil Okafor, spent the beginning part of his rookie season surrounded by controversy after getting into multiple off-the-court altercations late at night. Now, his year is done as he goes under the knife to repair a torn meniscus in his knee, and rumors are circling that the team will be willing to trade him this summer and instead proceed with its other injured young big, Joel Embiid.

First overall pick Karl-Anthony Towns, meanwhile, is having a historically good rookie season. His play in Minnesota is making some think twice about calling Anthony Davis the best young big man in the NBA and, alongside Andrew Wiggins and Zach Lavine, is making Bill Simmons call the Wolves “a little 2009 Thunder-y.”

With all the intrigue and excitement caused by these top three picks, it has become easy for some other impressive rookies to fly under the radar.

Devin Booker is one who should not be overlooked.

He has shown his talent all season long, but his recent play has been especially impressive. At a time when many are struggling with the so-called “rookie wall” most face late during their first-ever 82-game season, Booker is treating it like the Kool-Aid Man.

The 19-year-old has been improving all year long and has averaged 22.4 points per game in March, the best of any month so far. Long-range shooting is Booker’s stand-out skill, but he has actually been stuck in long-range slump since the All-Star break. His shooting is something nobody needs to worry about returning to form, however. And rather than continuing to hoist bad long-range attempts, Booker has been showing that he brings a lot more.

He has been calling his own number more often to score unassisted inside the arc, with more than a third of his buckets coming at the rim in the month. He has been opportunistic in transition, using his ability to lull defenders to sleep with a deliberate approach to his advantage. Booker never seems to explode, but he uses space so well off the bounce that he gets where he wants to be before the defender and uses his excellent body control to shield the ball and finish through contact and over outstretched arms.

He seems to compel his way past those guarding him with craft rather than relying on deception or quickness. His handle is exquisite if understated. Booker doesn’t leave players on the floor for highlight crossovers, but he has the entire toolkit in order to change locations and speed, busting out spin dribbles high above the arc to get to the other side of the floor or hitting flat-flooted defenders with fundamentally perfect inside-outs to split a double. He has increasingly become a reliable player to bring the ball up the court and set the offense, starting the set in a pick-and-roll with Alex Len or Tyson Chandler that often turns into a bucket with no more actions needed.

There is a hint of Brandon Roy in his game. The hesitations, stop-and-gos, and clever finishes are all there. He is never rushed, never out of control — always the opposite.

This drive with a graceful finger roll finish last night in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks is just one example of the many times per game he displays poise and precision beyond his years.

There is nothing spectacular about the play in terms of speed or power. He just gets close to the rim and then finishes with touch in a way few teenagers can — especially at this level over a shot-blocking menace like John Henson.

That is what sets him apart and makes him special. Each drive and finish, in and of itself, doesn’t blow you away. This isn’t the Greek Freak or Russell Westbrook. He just simply can’t be denied as he seeks the paint and is able to put the ball in the hoop in a variety of angles, whether he is on or off-balance. He is already doing the small, subtle things that most pros don’t learn for years. There is no need to say, “He can score off his athleticism now but wait until he figures it all out.” Because he already has. The little things should not be this refined. Not yet.

So it is watching Booker score with repetitiveness and, the word that every bucket conjures, poise that makes him so truly impressive.

Another reason — on top of the nuanced torture he uses to score and all the headlines focused on his rookie peers — that Booker isn’t being discussed more is that the Suns are terrible. But after his sleek finger roll last night, even a Bucks announcing crew who presumably doesn’t spend a lot of time watching Phoenix play could tell he was the best thing going on this roster. “The rest of the these guys are moveable pieces — this kid right here is the future of this franchise,” said one broadcaster.

In the Western Conference, only the Lakers are worse than the 20-54 Suns. And with the Goran Dragic drama last season, the Morris Brothers fiasco this year, and the unfortunate Eric Bledsoe injury, it’s no wonder few outside of Arizona are paying attention to the Suns anymore.

But Booker has been a beacon in the fog.

He isn’t filming anyone in the locker room. He isn’t fighting in the streets. And he isn’t the next great big man who is set to own the league for a decade.

Devin Booker is just a bucket getter who can shoot, drive, create, and run the offense in a way that doesn’t blow you away on any one given play. But as he keeps scoring and the defense keep on realizing that there is nothing they can do about it, the talent becomes undeniable.

Booker is a special player who won’t be overlooked by anyone much longer. There is an understated superstar emerging in Phoenix. He is 19 now and his low-key demeanor might keep his name under wraps for a while longer — but defenders are already at a loss to on the court.

Huertas Hide N’ Seek

Marcelo Huertas rarely looks like he belongs in the NBA. And I’m not just talking about his pre-hair-cut haircut. He simply isn’t that good and looks overmatched, both physically and from a talent perspective.

But for a few seconds last night against the Miami Heat, he looked like the smartest player in league history.

After finding himself far out of position — not unusual — he laid in waiting while Goran Dragic dribbled up court. He bid his time and hid behind Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, waiting until the unsuspecting Dragon had grown over-comfortable.

Then, like the Black Mamba whose namesake sat watching on the sidelines wrapped like a mummy in ice packs, he struck with speed and precision. He took what was his, snatching the ball away in a game that came down to overtime. Every possession mattered, and here was Marcelo making with the best using-of-the-opposing-coach-to-gain-an-advantage move since Jason Kidd caught Mike Woodson wandering onto the court.

Salute to Huertas, who proved that you don’t always have to be the best as long as you are the savviest of them all.

Words With Friends

This week’s five must-read articles about the NBA. Excerpts here — click through to read the full piece.

1. Bill Walton tells remarkable story of how Boston Celtics acquired him
by Jay King, Mass Live

“There’s Donald Sterling sitting there in his ostentatious throne behind his big, ornate desk. And he’s just leering at me with that reptilian, evil smile of his as I walk in the door. And he says, ‘Walton, if you want to make this deal go down, I owe you a fortune in deferred compensation,’ which was the economic model of the day, ‘and if you want to make this deal go down and you go to Boston you’ve got to leave every dime of that money here with me today.’ Now, this money had already been litigated over countless times, and I had won unanimously every single time. And so I looked at him and I reached across the desk, after he said that I’ve got to leave all the money that I had in the world right there with him, and I took that pen, and I signed that paper with as much confidence and bravado as I could possibly muster. I signed it, got up, turned, and never looked back. But as I walked out that door, out in the streets of Los Angeles that day, I asked myself, does he, Donald Sterling, really think that all his money, and now all of mine, would ever buy back his soul?

2. Lakers teammates ‘isolating’ D’Angelo Russell after video surfaces
by Baxter Holmes and Marc Stein, ESPN

Sources told ESPN.com that some teammates’ trust in Russell is eroding after a video surfaced in the past week that shows Russell recording a private conversation between himself and teammate Nick Young. Young does not appear to realize he is being taped. The video, which is believed to have come to light last week via the Twitter account of a celebrity gossip site, shows Russell filming Young while asking questions about Young being with other women. Young got engaged to Australian rapper Iggy Azalea last summer. The emergence of the video, sources, said, has been the talk of the locker room for the past several days and has led to a tangible strain between Russell and some teammates. At a recent breakfast meeting, one source said, no Laker would sit with Russell at his table.

3. The Power and Polarity of Peter Vecsey
by Ryan Glasspiegel, The Big Lead

Beloved by some and despised by others, and sometimes loved and hated by the same people over time, Vecsey was the first newspaper columnist to specialize in the NBA. He also made league gossip into an art form. After making some calls on [a potential Latrell Sprewell trade] that day, he’d wind up with something far more significant than trade news, and arguably the biggest scoop of his career … After hearing about how Sprewell had choked his head coach P.J. Carlesimo during practice, the source swiftly relayed the whole story back to Vecsey. This was about 7 pm. “I believed him, obviously,” Vecsey tells me, over a recent dinner in Manhattan. “He told me the whole story, and we go with it. Within an hour. We put that together in an hour.”

4. Russell Westbrook will dunk on your elaborate plan to stop him
by Zito Madu, SB Nation

That’s Luis Scola and Norman Powell trying to contain Westbrook in transition. That’s what failure looks like. Westbrook barely even acknowledged their attempt at a double-team before blowing through it and finishing at the rim. From the onset, he put a wrench in the plan to stop him simply by doing what he normally does. The problem with trying to defend him with more than one player is that while it works in theory, it hardly does in practice. You can only defend what you can see, after all. Westbrook makes it a habit to never stay in front of his defenders long enough for them to think … The way he embarrassed the Raptors wasn’t by slowing the game down, it was by speeding it up. His defenders couldn’t set themselves up long enough to do something useful.

5. Human love and the love of basketball
by Bob Kravitz, WTHR-13

What did Ben expect from Indiana, this distant spot on the globe? “I thought people would be, like, Amish,” Ben said, laughing now at the absurdity of it. “I thought there would be horse-drawn carriages and things like that. And windmills, lots of windmills.”

Post-All-Star Dame Is What to Watch

The Boston Celtics head to Oregon tonight to square off against the Portland Trail Blazers in a late-season, Nobody Believed In Us Bowl.

I am among the most guilty.

I was highly skeptical of Boston’s ability to win games this year. I was — and remain — surprised that the Celtics have strung together so many victories.

They have suffered a precipitous drop off since Jae Crowder went down with injury. But despite that struggle, the Cs could still enter the playoffs with home-court advantage. Looking at their roster on paper, that is remarkable. And the fact that they lead the Eastern Conference in points per game might be one of the biggest surprises of the season. They finished 13th last year (and an even worse 18th overall in offensive rating).

On the other side of the court, the Blazers are the more entertaining — and in my mind, better — team. They take almost one-third of their shots from 3-point range and are the sixth-highest scoring team in the NBA despite playing at a league-average pace.

It’s mostly due to Dame.

Damian Lillard has been on a mission since getting snubbed for the All-Star team, scorching nets for 27.7 points per game on 43.6% shooting. This includes a stupid 41.6% from 3-point range on 8.5 attempts per night from deep. Even his free-throw accuracy is off the charts at 94.7% as he gets to the stripe 7.1 times each game. There have been few better shows in sneakers over the past month, and Dame always shines the brightest with the raucous Rose Garden crowd cheering him on. (I’m not calling it that other name.)

It isn’t just Lillard. The Blazers as a whole are 24-12 at home this year, so it will be a tough ask for the Celtics to come in and get a win given their current form. They did recently win four in a row prior to getting blown out by the Clippers, including a win over the Raptors, but this just isn’t the same team without Crowder.

Regardless of the outcome, however, Lillard vs. Wee Isaiah Thomas — Boston’s entertainment engine who did make the All-Star team out East — is sure to be a high-energy, back-and-forth battle.

What they lack in height, they make up in heroics.