The Whiteboard: Devin Booker is the All-Star snub you can’t ignore

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On Tuesday, we made our picks for the 2021 NBA All-Star Game reserves. Later in the day, the league’s official picks — determined by its 30 head coaches — were announced. Not long after, we poured over all the snubs, trying to determine which ones legitimately should’ve been in and which ones functioned more like honorable mentions as deserving candidates who simply fell short of more deserving candidates.

There are All-Star snubs every year, and with the NBA talent pool as deep as it’s been in a long time, that will probably remain the case until the league expands its All-Star rosters from 12 players to 14 or 15. Doing so would make sense, given that there are 30 teams with up to 17 players on their rosters.

But for now, we only have 24 spots, which makes Devin Booker this year’s egregious casualty of the All-Star Game’s annual numbers crunch. It’s easy to forget and move on from each year’s snubs quickly, but this is one that cannot and should not be ignored.

Early in his career, what should’ve been seen as an unexpected success story for the 13th overall draft pick and sixth man out of Kentucky was quickly countered with what he couldn’t do. As his scoring acumen and popularity around the league grew, it was always met with the type of criticism that should’ve been more directed at the Phoenix Suns than anyone.

Yeah, he can score, but what else can he do?

Sure, he scored 50-plus in three straight games, but when will the Suns start winning?

Devin Booker can put up numbers on losing teams, but is he actually a winner?

Those questions can be pretty standard for any up-and-coming talent in the league, but in Booker’s case, they overwhelmingly ignored all the necessary context. You know, like how he was playing with G League-caliber players; like how good he was despite having no help; or like how the Suns cycled through five head coaches, two general managers and more than 70 different teammates through his first five seasons in the NBA.

The Suns won 23, 24, 21, 19 and 34 games in that span, which means they were easy to ignore as one of the biggest bottom-feeders out West. They were irrelevant, and with 29 other teams to watch, it became easy for national pundits to dismiss his case as one of the game’s rising young stars.

Even when he put up a career-high 26.6 points, 6.8 assists and 4.1 rebounds a night in 2018-19, he was nowhere near All-Star consideration. Phoenix still sucked!

Even when he followed that up with 26.6 points, 6.5 assists and 4.2 rebounds per game on an absurd 61.8 true-shooting percentage in 2019-20, he only got in as an All-Star injury replacement. His teams still don’t win enough!

And even when his Suns went a perfect 8-0 in the NBA bubble as Book put up MVP-caliber numbers on incredible efficiency, only then did people start to view him as a legitimate rising star. Okay, so maybe he’s good, but let’s see him do it for a full season!

No one that’s been watching Devin Booker and the Suns closely over the last few years is surprised to see his Suns finally winning now that he has help, but what is surprising is how the goal posts continue to move when it comes to giving this 24-year-old star the credit he deserves.

With each new season, Book has improved flaws in his game that were once causes for criticism. When people said he was an inefficient, high-volume scorer, he became more efficient, posting a true-shooting percentage above 58 percent in each of the last three seasons. When they wondered what he could do other than score, he became an advanced playmaker and passer, artfully navigating pick-and-rolls and averaging 6.8 and 6.5 assists a night over the last two years. And now, when people questioned whether he could ever defend or lead his team to the playoffs, he’s playing better defense and actually winning games.

The Suns are currently 20-10, boasting the fourth-best record and fifth-best point differential in the NBA. They’re a top-five defense and a top-10 offense. They’re on pace for the organization’s first playoff appearance since 2010 and seem poised to make some noise once they actually get there.

And yet, Devin Booker isn’t an All-Star simply because … why? Because his numbers aren’t as prolific as they were when he was losing?

Despite a slower start due to the early acclimation process next to Chris Paul, Booker’s been on an absolute tear since returning from a hamstring injury in late January, knocking down a game-winning 3 in his first game back and then earning Western Conference Player of the Week honors two weeks ago after personally demolishing the Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks.

In this season’s admittedly small sample size, Book is now averaging 24.7 points, 4.3 assists and 3.8 rebounds per game. He’s shooting 50.1 percent from the floor, 38.1 percent from 3-point range and 84.8 percent from the foul line. His assist numbers are down, but that’s by design; Booker has sacrificed some of the ball-handling duties he used to dominate to allow Paul — and the Suns, by extension — to thrive. He’s playing better defense, moving the ball where it needs to be and functioning more as a primary, three-level scorer.

It’s what the Suns have needed from the face of their franchise to push toward their ceiling, and he’s doing exactly what winning players do by adjusting his game for the good of the team.

The results have spoken for themselves … and yet, he was left off the All-Star reserves list in favor of Zion Williamson, a young star on the rise who’s putting up big numbers despite his terrible defense while playing for a losing team.

Nothing against Zion or his All-Star case, but the irony — bordering on hypocrisy — is impossible to ignore there, and it’s even harder to stomach for Suns fans watching as the only good thing they’ve had for the last decade continues to be disrespected. What more does Booker have to do before he’s finally accepted as a legitimate superstar and winning player?

Guys get snubbed every year, and more than likely, he’ll be named as Anthony Davis’ injury replacement. But that’ll make it two years running where his All-Star selection will have a little asterisk next to it. And that’s a damn shame, because after Devin Booker spent years internalizing every little criticism of his game and addressing those shortcomings, the basketball world doesn’t seem ready to return the favor.

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If you’re looking for more All-Star snub talk beyond Booker, we’ve got you fully covered here.

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