PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns won their final home game of the season in a Western
Conference matchup against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, April 11, but it didn’t feel
that way in the arena.
Though there was a few applause and cheers for the victors, there was also what
seemed to be an apprehension towards the future of the team itself. Trade rumors have
circulated throughout the world of professional basketball as experts discuss the Suns
potentially trading away one of the biggest assets the organization has ever had —
Devin Booker.
Booker is a lunch-pale guy. He’s somebody who, when given the opportunity and
injury-free, shows up every game and brings the best of what he has to the table. With
the exception of the rare 10-point game, Booker is a guaranteed bucket. He’s also a
guaranteed face of the franchise, that is, if the Suns organization allows him to be.
If the Suns trade away Booker, they’ll almost certainly condemn themselves to the era of Suns basketball that followed the Stoudemire-Nash days where attendance was low,
and competitive basketball was near-absent.
At any given time during the season, home games at the Footprint Center are swarmed
by local fans sporting the shooting dynamic guard’s jersey. It’s a sea of “#1s”.
Of course, jersey sales don’t win championships, but what they actually do is corral
support for the team. Booker’s career as a Sun is single-handedly the main reason the
program has garnered as much local and national attention as it has in the previous
decade. Without him, the team will effectively have no identity.
He’s the face of the franchise, and unless the team plans on bringing in a player with
even more notoriety (like a Lebron James), they’ll struggle to find their identity in years
to come.
Rebuilding years are inevitable and, in most cases, even necessary. But what I can’t
possibly fathom is rebuilding without your foundation. You can slap whatever shingles
on the roof you’d like (i.e., Bradley Beal) or change all of your floors to pristine hardwood (i.e., Kevin Durant), but what you’ll find as a result of all of these home improvements without Booker at the base of the building will be a crumbling mess.
Many people have taken the position that losing Booker is a necessary sacrifice, and the
financial resources the team would receive as compensation would be more than
enough to rebuild their roster. But the biggest flaw in that argument is not
understanding exactly why they could make so much money by severing ties. The reason that deal would be so lucrative is because Booker is still quite clearly in his
prime.
It can’t be argued that Booker isn’t one of the elite scorers in the league. He was top-10
in terms of scoring this past season, and he averaged less than three three-point shots
per game. The 28-year-old phenom gets the ball to the rim and scores at will, and he’s
still got plenty of time to develop his outside shot.
Trading a top-15 player is not only risky, it’s potentially suicide. The Suns would have to
target a prominent name within the NBA to fill the void that would be left by Booker’s
potential departure. Trading for draft picks would almost certainly not pan out as the
team would hope, as rookies are untested. The likelihood they would be able to find any
combination of assets that would supplement the lack of offense the Suns will have
without Booker is slim to none.
In a league that is largely player-driven, and where the average length of a contract is
only 4 years, Booker has given a decade of high-caliber basketball to the Phoenix Suns
organization.
He’s loyal—maybe even to a fault—and severing his relationship with the team would not only put a bad taste in the mouths of thousands of Suns fans, but it would also send a terrible message to the team and the rest of the league. The Suns possibly trading
Booker is comparable to the Packers sending Brett Favre to New York or Luka Doncic to the Lakers. Even simply writing these examples out feels sacrilegious.
Whatever the front office ultimately decides will dictate the future of the franchise for
the next 10 years or more. For better or worse.
