Suns GM McDonough: Devin Booker’s hand swelled in pickup game

The Phoenix Suns announced Monday that their star player, guard Devin Booker, had successful surgery on his hand. They didn’t announce why.

The team’s general manager, Ryan McDonough, joined Bickley & Marotta on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station Tuesday and fielded the question: What happened this offseason that caused the 21-year-old’s hand to require surgery, two weeks before the start of training camp?

“As you guys know he did have the injury late last year,” McDonough said, referring to a lingering issue for Booker during the end of the 2017-18 season for which he missed the final 12 games. “There were no symptoms over the summer. The hand died down, it calmed down a little bit, it looked good, there was nothing structurally wrong with it.”

The GM went on to explain that in recent weeks, the Suns have had members of their NBA roster in the gym for workouts and pickup games. That’s when the swelling happened.

“Just in one of those games, the hand swelled up,” he said. “There was no trauma that we could see — it wasn’t like he hit it or jammed it or anything stood out unusually while he was playing. The hand just swelled up.”

“We had a hand specialist here in Phoenix look at it and it was determined that he did need surgery and he flew to LA [Monday] morning and did the procedure that we’re projecting keeps him out six weeks. As you guys know, our season opener — our regular season opener — is five weeks from [Wednesday] night. So hopefully the rehab goes well and he’s back right around the beginning of the regular season.”

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