5 reasons the Phoenix Suns’ 2018 and 2019 opening nights are totally different

Devin Booker Phoenix Suns (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

This team will not have to count on Devin Booker nearly as much

If you watched any of last season, you saw that the roster as a whole leaned on Devin Booker, a lot.

Time after time, if Booker himself did not take control of a game, not only would others not, they simply could not – just ask Josh Jackson who tried and tried, only to regularly make things worse.

In the opening night victory over the Mavericks, Booker was the one who took over when no one else on the team could.

Clinging to a four point lead with 6:30 remaining, Devin Booker hit a 3.

Then an and-one.

Then after Wesley Matthews hit a 3, Booker followed up with one of his own.

Then another.

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Josh Jackson surprisingly hit two himself back-to-back, before Booker unconsciously made one more.

In the end, Devin Booker scored 21 of his 35 (total) points in the final 6:44 of the game.

Something that superstars can do, but something that cannot be relied upon game-in-and-game-out throughout an 82 game season.

In fact, Josh Jackson ended up with 18 points off the bench himself, a score he would not only reach or surprise 12 additional times on the season, with his team losing eight of those games in total.

Against the Sacramento Kings, Booker finished with “just” 22 points, nine of which were scored in garbage time (obviously to pad his stats) in the final 4:00 with his team up by at least 24 or more.

His teammates did not need him to carry them.

They were able to work as a whole efficiently enough to put their opponent away and step on their throat, with Devin Booker scoring a very pedestrian 13 points through the game’s first 44 minutes.

While we can certainly expect to see Booker score 30 or more points plenty of times this season, barring some dramatic shift in philosophy which may be an obvious sign that the season has gone off the rails, we will (overall) see a much different star scorer than we are used to, something that without hesitation will be a supreme positive for the direction of this franchise moving into the future.