Three Phoenix Suns franchise-records Devin Booker can break this season
By Adam Maynes
Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker was finally made an All-Star this season, and not for nothing: he is having a historic year for the franchise. These are three franchise-records he could potentially break.
Devin Booker is arguably the third best player the Phoenix Suns has employed over the last 25 years behind just Charles Barkley and Steve Nash.
His level of improvement over the last two years is meteoric, and he only projects to be better as he enters his prime, to the point that he becomes one of the top-ten players in the league.
On an individual level, Booker hasn’t really been all that particularly memorable this season, considering that he has yet to have that one marque game by scoring 50 points, hitting an iconic game-winning shot at the buzzer, or even a triple-double.
And yet, he has been extremely consistent (save for a one week period following the passing of Kobe Bryant, a period of time that included the initial news that he had not been selected for the All-Star Game), putting up very similar numbers overall to last season, easily the best season of his career to date.
Now that that is all behind him, and he has had a few days to rest both mentally and physically following the Break, Booker can re-focus on the end of this season, and potentially even take his game up a notch.
If he does, several franchise-records could fall.
Of course, scoring records are the major ones, and the first two records that he could break involve that skill which he excels at seemingly so effortlessly.
Tom Chambers set a couple of franchise-records in his first two seasons with the franchise (1989-91), averaging 25.7 points per game, then 27.2 – the record he still holds.
In 1990-91, he also scored a franchise-season-high of 2,201 total points (almost unbelievably, only 72 of which came from beyond the arc).
Last season, Devin Booker came just .6 points per game away from tying and breaking Chambers’ scoring record, yet no one else in franchise history has really ever come very close (Amar’e Stoudemire averaged 26.0 points in 2004-05, and Charles Barkley put up 25.6 in 1992-93).
No one has ever sniffed Chambers’ total points record of 2,201 either, as he still also holds the second-most points in a season record as well at 2,085, with Stoudemire’s 2,080 in ’04-05 a distant third.