Suns learning painful Devin Booker lesson

Devin Booker is going to go down as the greatest Phoenix Suns player of all-time, it is becoming increasingly harder to debate that.

But these NBA Playoffs have also brought us face-to-face with another reality of the 29-year-old's tenure as the franchise cornerstone.

This is as good as Devin Booker is ever going to be

This is it. We've reached the peak of Booker's powers and if anything (and whisper it quietly), the other side might be closer than we're willing to admit.

While this is being framed as a negative, Booker is still more than capable of being an All-Star for several years to come. Scoring title? Unlikely given his unselfishness, but you never know.

But stats like the one above prove what the eye test has shown us throughout this entire series, and really going back to late in the regular season.

Booker hasn't been his dominant self for a minute, and although the whistle the Oklahoma City Thunder are getting is outrageous, it goes deeper than that.

He has now lost nine playoff games in a row going back to 2023, and when you consider how good Booker was in that series versus the Denver Nuggets, it is worrying to see where he's at now.

Then there is Dillon Brooks, who carries himself like the man, but who has always understood that this is Booker's team.

Only in Game 3 versus the Thunder it was Brooks making all of the difficult shots down the stretch, and his will to keep them in the game longer than they had any right to be was huge.

So much so that Brooks might just be the most clutch player on this roster, which is great news for him but not what the Suns want to hear while Booker is still in town.

The offseason can fix this problem, but it will involve adding more players who can fit next to Booker in ways that he currently does not have.

Jalen Green was added to help carry that offensive load, but for the most part he has not been able to hit shots when his team have really needed him to.

Another guy who can create their own shot would be massive, but they are hard to find and that is why Grayson Allen and Collin Gillespie have so much value in Phoenix.

The Thunder would make almost any player look bad, but the reality is we're living in Booker's peak right now and the Suns have to accept whatever that looks like.

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