Coming into this season, Phoenix Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek has yet another guard on his roster that he will have to find minutes for.
First round pick Devin Booker starred in the NBA Summer League this July, averaging 15.3 points and 4.9 rebounds in 30 minutes per game. His field goal percentage sat a decent 40 percent and he managed to also knock down 40 percent of his three-point attempts while starting in five games.
Against the New Orleans Pelicans in the semifinal, Booker knocked down five three-pointers and finished with 31 points to go with nine rebounds.
All of this from a kid who won’t turn 19 until the season starts.
The poise shown by Booker thus far shouldn’t surprise anyone; the 18-year-old shooting guard played an average of 21.5 minutes a game at Kentucky, a team that garnered more national recognition than any college basketball team in recent memory.
In the blue spotlight, Booker managed to be one of the Wildcats’ most efficient shooters, averaging 10.0 points per contest, knocking down his two-point field goals at a 52.7 percent clip and his three-point field goals at a 41.1 percent rate. If Booker had played 40 minutes per game, a common NBA mark for a starter, he would’ve averaged 19.4 points per game shooting at 47 percent overall.
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A prospect that drew a lot of comparisons to Golden State’s Klay Thompson throughout the draft process, Booker fell into the Suns’ lap at 13 and general manager Ryan McDonough pulled the trigger.
Now how does the 6’6” shooting guard get involved in an offense that already features Brandon Knight, Eric Bledsoe and Archie Goodwin?
At this point, it looks as though Hornacek is going to have to get creative with his lineups in order to get all four guys meaningful minutes, a task he’s no stranger to in his third season at the helm.
With Bledsoe and Knight both signed to five-year $70 million deals, it would be difficult for Booker to crack a starting lineup as a rookie, but definitely not impossible.
For starters, both Knight and Bledsoe are natural point guards, having played the position for their entire careers. To keep both in the starting lineup, one will have to transition to shooting guard. Knight, who played in 11 games at shooting guard last season and averaged 13.4 points and 4.5 assists per game in that span, will likely be relied on to play the 2 yet again this season.
However, Knight only shot 31.3 percent from behind the arc, proving to be a minimal threat for defenses from long range. Additionally, Bledsoe isn’t known to be much of a three-point shooter, only taking 272 attempts all season. The efficiency wasn’t there either, as Bledsoe only hit 88 of those attempts, which equates to 32.4 percent from behind the arc.
With Gerald Green leaving town to sign with the Miami Heat, the team is without a legitimate threat to knock down three-point shots consistently.
This is where Devin Booker can make his case.
The strongest part of Booker’s game is widely believed to be his ability to knock down the three-ball on a consistent basis. At Kentucky, Booker was able to hit 2.8 of his 6.9 three-point attempts per game, a 41.1 conversion rate from long range. If he can remain at least somewhat efficient in his transition to the NBA, he might find himself in a sixth-man role and fill the void left by Green (to an extent).
The looming threat of Archie Goodwin will pose a threat to Booker’s minutes as well.
Since he was drafted in 2013, Goodwin has improved on a year-to-year basis. In his rookie season, Goodwin played in 52 games and was on the floor for an average of 10.3 minutes. In those 10.3 minutes, Goodwin averaged 3.7 points on 45.5 percent shooting.
In his second year, Goodwin saw his minutes increase to 13.0 and even started two games, scoring 5.6 points per game on a pedestrian 39.3 shooting percentage with 1.8 rebounds and 1.1 assists. Blown up on a larger scale, had Goodwin played starter minutes (36), his numbers in his second season would have theoretically spiked to 15.5 points per game, 5.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game — numbers of a capable shooting guard.
The case remains the same for Goodwin as it did with Bledsoe and Knight in his small sample size in Phoenix: the ability to shoot the three ball just wasn’t there.
Sir Charles In Charge
In his first two seasons, Goodwin averaged a lackluster three-point percentage of 21.1 through 93 games. The percentage has been trending upward since Goodwin came into the league, going from 13.9 in his first season to 29.3 in his second and then 31.3 in the Summer League. However, Goodwin needs to be more efficient from long range in his third season on a consistent basis to be viewed as the legitimate threat from behind the arc the team needs.
Booker has the edge over all three guys in terms of efficiency from three-point range, though the effectiveness of his offensive game has yet to be seen in the NBA. Goodwin has paid his dues and proved he can be effective at times, and no one is going to beat out Knight or Bledsoe to start the year.
Booker will have to prove himself and will likely start with no more than 10-15 minutes in the rotation. However, should Bledsoe or Knight go down, or should Booker prove that he’s ready to handle the pressure of more time, he could be in a key role sooner rather than later.
Based off of his talent and demeanor to this point, it might be reasonable to expect the kid from Grand Rapids to be a factor in getting this Suns team back to the playoffs for the first time since 2010’s Western Conference Finals run.
The pressure is on Booker to go out and prove that he can be the player that Suns brass is hoping he will be, but the sky is the limit for the young prospect.
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