25-under-25: Devin Booker at No. 9

The Step Back is rolling out its 25-under-25 list over the next few days. Follow along with our rankings of the top 25 players under the age of 25.

The best thing that can be said about Devin Booker, who will turn 21 a few days into the 2017-18 season, is that he’s the kind of player who can make you excited about mostly silly things like the number 70.

Because when a player any age, but especially one so young, overcomes the myriad obstacles standing in the way of scoring 70 points in a NBA game, excitement is not always the first thing that comes to mind. Those obstacles are legitimate: the flow of a competitive offense, the needs of one’s teammates, energy on defense. Getting to 70 means mostly ignoring all of those things, and it’s not always fun to watch when players ignore their responsibilities.

But watching that March game between the Celtics and Suns in Boston, it was impossible not to go crazy. What Booker did, scoring that many points in those circumstances against a team like the Celtics, was wild.

The 70-point game is what happens if you multiply Booker’s typical style by a thousand. He’s a player who blurs the line between selfishness and learning on the fly, shooter and scorer, leader and just most talented.

As the No. 13 pick, not much discussion surrounded his entry into the league. Booker is the unfortunate overachiever whose development draws scrutiny, but that’s a tremendous position to be in, as a player and as a part of a team. By finding his place in the league so quickly and turning into a young leader for this Suns team, Booker has given the Suns a head start on the rebuilding process. If things break right, he is the piece that rebuilds exist to unearth.

On the other hand, the critics who have come out since his development took off in the second half of the 2015-16 season certainly have reason to be concerned. At this point, Booker does not look like he can be the focal point of a contending team. Both statistically and stylistically, he is not quite to that point.

Booker improved to 5.8 free throws per 36 minutes last season, up nearly two attempts from his rookie season, but not enough to truly diversify his offense. One way he might make up for that is to lean further on the 3-point shot that was supposed to be his strength coming out of Kentucky. Booker will hope to improve on the 35 percent career mark on 3s that he has posted over his first two seasons.

If he can add another layer of physicality to his offensive game, challenging defenders and getting to the line more often, it might open up that 3-point shot. Booker has improved tremendously each year since being drafted. Though there is clearly room for him to grow, it’s likely we will see another uptick in production and efficiency this season.

And it might be better if we could just stop talking about Booker’s defense entirely, because it doesn’t seem like we know how to have that conversation. He has the timing and athleticism to make game-changing plays in transition, blocking shots that make complaints about his effort level sound silly.

We’ve also seen repeatedly that players who handle a large enough burden on offense must simply affect the game in some positive way on defense to be valuable. Stopping opposing teams from scoring requires contributions from all five players on the court, and that means one weak link can be covered up. On offense though, a single elite talent can win games. You find a way to make room for a game-changer like that.

At the same time, he does struggle to contain players one-on-one, and loses focus within the motion of team defense. He actually posted a worse Defensive Box Plus-Minus last season than in his rookie year. Though he has the size to match up with bigger wings, he is not as quick as the best scorers in the league. He struggles to make the most of any matchup in the halfcourt.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to separate Booker’s individual struggles from those of the Suns as a whole. They bit down on the youth movement harder than any team in the league last season, at times looking more like a rerun of Degrassi than a basketball team. For most of March and April, Booker shared the court with Tyler Ulis, Derrick Jones Jr. and Marquese Chriss. The Suns regressed on both sides of the court, and it made all of the veterans’ numbers look far worse.

Perhaps that regression also made Booker’s numbers look better on offense. This season won’t answer that question — the Suns figure to be just as bad as last year. But if we look back to that 70-point triumph, and understand that explosions like that surpass objective evaluation of team performance, we can rest assured that Booker is special.

Next: 25-under-25 -- The best young players in the NBA

He’s coloring in the lines he drew during his first two seasons. But boy do those pictures already look beautiful.