The Phoenix Suns dominated ESPN for six hours on Saturday, but not how you might think. Devin Booker beat Deandre Ayton in the finals of the NBA 2K Players Tournament.
After the first Phoenix Suns loss or tough break in real life, sarcastic Suns Twitter will flood with remarks along the lines of, “Well, at least we are good at video games,” but don’t that future jerks steal your joy.
Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton glided through the NBA 2K Players Tournament all the way to the Finals to make it an all-Phoenix Suns championship. The two were the favorites to win at the start of the tournament and it turns out Vegas knows that they’re talking about even when it comes to Xbox.
Watching two Phoenix Suns players get the spotlight for six hours straight on a Saturday in April is not something that typically happens. Of course, it would be better if this was the 80th game of the regular season and the Suns were in a race for the playoffs, but publicity is publicity and it is great for NBA fans to get to know some Suns players and watch them have some success on a national level, even if it is just playing video games.
Having said that, I will tell you who did not like watching six hours straight of grown men playing video games: my wife.
It turns out there are some people who have been enjoying this sports hiatus.
Anyway, while the highlight of the night was no doubt that two Suns made it to the finals, the real entertainment of the NBA2K marathon came during the Deandre Ayton versus Patrick Beverley matchup in the semis. Beverley, was known to be the biggest, baddest trash-talker of the tournament, but DA, to say the least, shut him up.
After pulling off a game-one upset in the best of three series, Deandre Ayton went straight baller and picked the Phoenix Suns, one of the least-used teams in the game, to take on Beverley in game-two. As soon as he did it, Beverly called him, “gangster,” and Ayton backed it up by throwing an oop to his own character on the very first score of the game.
The virtual Ayton went off all game, posterizing players at will, and even…wait for it…drilling a 3-pointer. You could tell Ayton and his somewhat goofy trash talk was getting to Beverley, but when the guy his kicking his butt with his own character, what was he going to say?
On top of the actual gameplay, it was great to hear DA defend his team publically. When Beverly (pretended?) not to know certain players on the Suns, Ayton backed up his real-life teammates and no one more than Jevon Carter. The animated version of the Bulldog made four 3-pointers (three of them in the first quarter alone), and when Beverly dismissed it as nonsense, Ayton said, “That’s what he does, for real.”
In the finals, it was all Devin Booker.
The trash talk was fairly simplistic between the two teammates, but the best part was when Booker kept getting annoyed because Ayton continually paused the game. It was the kind of argument you might have with your friends or brothers playing the game in your living room, except this was for $100,000.
That jackpot ended up in the hands of the charity of Booker’s choice and is on its way to help COVID-19 relief efforts. Combine that with the $100,000 he raised playing Call of Duty and Booker has done some seriously good work with the sticks during this hiatus.
The next pseudo-basketball adventure the NBA is putting on is the HORSE tournament, and while we speculated as to which Suns player would be best at it, no player will be participating in the event.
So that’s it for Suns live action for a while unless the NBA picks up the regular season. Let’s hope they do. This kind of thing makes me miss basketball that much more.