The Phoenix Suns have numerous decisions ahead of them this upcoming offseason, including multiple restricted free agents, unrestricted free agents, and players with trade value. The following series will examine those decisions as our writing team presents both a point and a counterpoint for each.
Why do you love the Phoenix Suns? When discussing the future of Devin Booker, this question becomes more than a conversation topic at Majerle’s.
For many of us, our sports fandoms were not chosen, but inherited.
We sat, week after week, next to our fathers on the couch and rooted alongside them. In doing so, we gained our own emotional attachment, not just to the team but also to our childhood. That inexorable link can last a lifetime.
My own father didn’t care much for basketball. It was baseball and hockey on the TV in our house growing up. I sat next to him as the Red Wings won the Cup in 2008 and cheered with him. I remember sitting in his bedroom watching Jim Joyce blow the call on the last out of Armando Galarraga’s perfect game for the Tigers.
But when it came to basketball, I was a free agent. I didn’t watch until I was already in High School, and there was no reason to choose the Pistons in the 2010s. But one team had recently picked a young shooting guard born in my home state of Michigan. Thus, Devin Booker became my gateway drug into the Phoenix Suns.
Today, I am as loyal an acolyte as any. Until the day he was traded, I delusionally defended the Ayton pick to my friends. When the Suns made the finals in 2021, I had people all over the country texting me because the one thing that everyone knew about me was that I loved this team.
But what about you? Year in and year out, you come back. Why?
By definition, it can’t be that you are addicted to the feeling of seeing your team win an NBA championship. It has to be something else. That something else is more important now than ever.
The Phoenix Suns are at a crossroads. Devin Booker is a Tier-2 kind of star. Some players, like Wemby, you might be willing to build a team around without a true second superstar. Booker just isn’t that guy.
So, what do the Suns do?
Option A: Use what little draft capital the Suns have to build what team they can around Devin Booker, while combatting the total lack of cap due to the Bradley Beal stretched contract.
Option B: Accept that the Suns are not winning a title with Devin Booker and trade him for assets that can make the foundation of the next great Suns team.
Both options are rather unpalatable. If you go with Option A, you are likely dooming yourself to years of the Play-In and first-round exits. If you go with Option B, you know that you are dooming yourself to years of handing over high draft picks to other teams while the Suns wallow in disappointment.
Neither option feels great, but neither option brings the Suns a title either. So, what are the benefits of trading Devin Booker now?
Booker’s value will never be higher
This is, I think, the most urgent point. We are still years away from Book being a distressed asset. He is coming off of a season where the Suns overperformed with him at the wheel. It is likely that, around the league, Devin Booker has regained some of the value that he likely lost under Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer. There are teams out there that do have their number one star that could look over at Devin Booker and think, “There’s our missing piece.”
The clock on that is running out, though. Booker turns 30 in October and already looks like he might be a step slower than he used to be. Soon, he will reach a point where some of those random lower-body injuries are more likely to recur. If Booker sustains one major injury, the Suns will have nothing significant to trade and will become the most pitiable franchise in the NBA.
Right now, the Suns have a guy with an All-Star floor and an NBA Finals ceiling. Every year that they wait to trade Devin Booker, both of those lower a little bit more. That is a problem. Every little bit of value that Devin Booker loses could mean fewer draft picks or young players coming back in a trade. Given the recent NBA Draft Lottery reform, Booker is already going to net the Suns less in a trade than he would have two weeks ago. Teams are surely going to be less willing to part with their draft picks now.
Booker is getting harder to trade
Devin Booker is being paid like one of the best players in basketball. He will make fifty-seven million dollars this season. In the final year of his contract, he will make almost $69 million dollars at age 33, depending on what the league cap number is at that time. Regardless, he will account for 36% of your cap in 2029-30.
The teams most likely to trade for Book are the teams closest to winning. Those teams are also the teams most likely to be at, over, or close to the second apron.
Currently, only the Cleveland Cavaliers are over the second apron. Go back one season, and there were three teams. Go back another, and there were five. Every year, teams fear the second apron more and more. It melts a team’s financial and roster flexibility. The second apron currently sits at around $207 million. Is a team going to be willing to pay over a quarter of that for a second star in his thirties?
Surely, one team will be willing. Every year, there is a team that feels like they are so close that they are willing to trade away key pieces and flexibility for the final player that they think will bring them over the top. This past season, the Cleveland Cavaliers were the prime example of that, trading for James Harden.
My point, though, is that the first and second aprons, and the rules surrounding them, make trades for high-salary players complicated. Many teams would have to gut their cores to bring in a guy making as much as Devin Booker does. If they have also traded away draft capital and are hard-capped or close to it, how will they build around Booker and their other star?
If Booker were Giannis, this wouldn’t be an issue. True, 1A superstars are worth every penny and loss of flexibility. Booker just isn’t that. As his salary continues to rise alongside his age, Booker is becoming less tradable by the season.
What are the Suns really accomplishing by keeping him?
In my opinion, this is the best argument. If you are willing to sit and just watch enjoyable basketball for the next few years and are content as long as the Suns win more than they lose, then you should go and sit on the other side of the fence.
But if you really want to see the Suns win a title and force their way out of the mess that they have built, you should want Devin Booker to be traded.
Until the Suns are free of the Bradley Beal shackles and have some draft capital back, they are playing at a severe disadvantage compared to the rest of the NBA. 13% of the Suns’ salary cap is already dead next season, being paid to Bradley Beal and Nassir Little to be anywhere but Phoenix. Meanwhile, their first pick that doesn’t have a “least favorable of X, Y, and Z teams” qualifier on it doesn’t come until 2032, two years after the end of Booker’s contract in 2030.
The Suns are set up for years of disappointment either way. They can do it now, while there is already the sunk cost of Bradley Beal and no draft capital, or they can do it later when Devin Booker is either in his mid-thirties or on a different team, and there is still no draft capital. The only difference between the two options is whether or not the Suns give themselves some tools to rebuild with along the way.
It’s time
Look, I want to see the Larry O’Brien trophy in the Valley of the Sun. This franchise and this city deserve it. Arizona sports is a hellscape that some are born into and others enter willingly, but it is a hellscape either way. The Coyotes are gone, the Cardinals always disappoint, and the D-Backs are forced to play in the same division as the Dodgers, which are apparently run by Mr. Monopoly Moneybags.
But none of that matters, because Phoenix is a basketball city. The Suns will always be Phoenix’s first love. I don’t want the Suns to trade the franchise’s greatest player because I’m some black-pilled doomer. I want the Suns to trade him because I wholeheartedly believe that doing so will bring the Suns closer to a title than they currently are.
I don’t watch sports for seasons that end barely over .500. I watch because I want to see my team reach the mountaintop. I watch because I know when they do, it will be the end of the great, long journey that it took to get there. When the Suns do win the title, it won’t be in spite of the fact that they traded Booker. On the contrary, all future Suns teams will be built on the back of the legacy Booker will leave behind in Phoenix. Just like recent Suns teams are built on the backs of Nash, Barkley, Stoudemire, Westphal, Adams, and so many more.
Booker will be one more in the line of greats that Phoenix Suns fans have watched on the road to glory.
The end of Booker’s time in Phoenix doesn’t mean the end of his legacy. But trading him now for pieces that can build the next great Suns team can enhance his legacy even more. His value on the trade market can be his last great gift to this organization.
Devin Booker was my entry point into Suns fandom, but even so, I believe it is time to let him go.
