3 goals for the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker for the 2023-24 season
By Luke Duffy
3 goals for the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker for the 2023-24 season.
1. Win the MVP award.
This is a big ask, the biggest of Booker’s career to date. Winning an MVP award is exceptionally hard. Tatum has never done it, and the likes of James Harden and Russell Westbrook only managed it once. Even Booker’s teammate Durant, one of the best players this century, only has one himself.
But if Booker wants to assume the mantle of the next Kobe Bryant, as both he and Tatum have jostled for, this is the separator. Booker’s case is actually easier to map out than it should be, and it begins with being the best player on his own team by virtue of Durant not playing enough games to get serious consideration.
That shouldn’t be the goal for Durant anyway, he is all about saving himself for the postseason and championships at this point of his career. If the Suns can make this superteam come together seamlessly, it will be because Booker connected all of the dots en route to the Suns having one of the best records in the NBA.
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If he can average close to 30 points per game and have a career high in assists in say 72 games played for one of the best teams in the league, that’s a fantastic start. He is a career 35.6 percent shooter from deep, so nudging that number close to the magical 40 percent would go a long way to helping too.
If Booker can also have the best defensive season of his career under new head coach Frank Vogel, then what is stopping him from achieving this goal? Remember when the Suns went 8-0 in the bubble, and it was a preview for their finals run? Perhaps we just saw Booker’s audition for league MVP, with that incredible playoff performance of 2022-23. This is hard, but not impossible.