Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns continued his video game dominance during the NBA hiatus by advancing to the semi-finals of the NBA2K Players Tournament.
The Phoenix Suns might not be playing basketball on the hardwood, but they are playing on XBox in the NBA2K Players tournament and Devin Booker is kicking the rest of the league’s butt.
Booker took on Rui Hachimura of the Washington Wizards, who played with the LA Clippers. Book took the Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns fans finally got to see Devin play with Luka Doncic.
Too soon? Okay.
After Hachimura talked to someone offscreen as the game started, Booker called him out. “You got a coach over there?” he asked.
Hachimura giggled and sheepishly admitted he did have someone helping him out. Booker did not let him live it down, but at first, it seemed to work.
Booker got off to a rough start and was down by as many as eight points in the second quarter. Then, he turned it on. In the third quarter, he took over, and he took over specifically with, you guessed it, Luka Doncic.
He was running designed plays with Luka off the ball and it led to two straight 3-pointers, which Booker sarcastically screamed out credit to Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle.
Booker also gave a huge shoutout to his Kentucky teammate, Willie Cauley-Stein. After Willie threw down a vicious reverse dunk, Booker screamed out, “Yeah, Trill!” in reference to his used-to-be-nickname-but-now-legal-name. There might not be a more interesting person in the league than Willy Cauley-Stein.
I will say one thing, though. If Devin Booker complains to the real-life refs as much as he complains to the virtual one, it starts to make sense why he never gets any calls. Even I was getting slightly annoyed after the twentieth innocuous play where he screamed, “Come on, ref!”
Booker pulled away from Hachimura and ended up winning 71-55. Just to add insult to what was already in insulting victory, Booker intentionally fouled with less than 30 seconds left in the game just so he could bring his bench in to dribble out the clock.
Cold move, and an awesome one.
Booker will now face Montrezl Harrell in the semi-finals, but since this is a Kentucky vs. Louisville matchup (the greatest college basketball rivalry, no matter what ESPN or people from North Carolina tell you), and we missed March Madness this year, I’m not going to call it the semi-finals and call it the final four.
Devin Booker
Kentucky takes on
Montrezl Harrell
Louisville Saturday in the
semi-finals
Final Four of the
NBA2K Players Tournament
something super important.
Get excited.