Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
He's not a top 3 shooting guard. He's not as good as Jimmy Butler (who is generally a shooting guard, although some consider him more of a small forward), and I'd take Derozan over him too. So he's the 5th best, and I'd say there's even contention with that considering Bradley Beal exists.
Devin Booker has a lot of potential, sure, and we all know he can score, but outside of a vacuum scoring ability isn't everything. I'm looking elsewhere in his game. His career best DRTG is 112. That's appalling. Opponents shot 1.4% better than their averages against him, and that actually makes him look slightly better than he is because somehow he defends the area between 15 feet and the three point line relatively well: if you only count 15 feet and in, opponents shoot 6.7% better than their averages against him.
Despite having a 25ppg season, his PER was 18.1, barely above league average. His TS% was 56%, which is above league average but only slightly, and that's helped by his very good FT%: his actual field goal percentage for his career is 42%, which isn't good by any means. He has a career 0.045 WS/48, and despite this 25/4/5, only actually had 2.4 win shares this last season. His usage rate was 32%. That's huge, the same as ADs career high, and to a much less impressive result.
Now, here's the important part: some of those stats (win shares, for example) are dependent on team success, and he hasn't really had any. Still, AD's first season we only won 27 games and he had 6.1 WS and a 104 DRTG, so there's only a limited extent to which you can blame his team for that. He is still 21, like you said. So it's possible that in three years time, he's 24/25 years old, his defense has picked up, his team is winning a little bit, his efficiency has risen to maybe 45% from the floor, etc etc, and I'll be wrong and his contract will actually look fine.
My reason for thinking it's going to look rough is that I don't really see Phoenix's rebuild paying off the way they want it to, and I don't see him fixing all the holes in his game in that time. I think in four years, they'll be sat with little success to show for it, Booker about to finish out his contract having not yet fixed those issues in his game at that point (he'll still only be young), and we'll all be wondering why this guy who's getting paid $40m is just solid.
Like I said, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he fixes all those things, and four years from now he's developed his game into an all around game, learned how to win a little, picked up his efficiency, and I'll look like an idiot, and I'll be happy for that because I don't really want him to fail because he seems like a nice guy. Just, when I watch him, I don't have that feeling, you know? And the stats thus far in his career support that feeling, despite the early status.
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