Will Devin Booker go down swinging in Suns’ do-or-die against Warriors?

Whether the Suns go splat in a must-win play-in game against the Warriors or fall to the 64-win Thunder in the first round matters little regarding the team’s path to improvement next season.

The roster around Devin Booker is flawed, but getting better will be hard considering financial restraints.

There’s obviously value and validation in Phoenix winning Friday against Golden State and experiencing even a short — even ugly — playoff series. Immediately after this season ends, we can already see the scary offseason narratives ahead.

Booker going down swinging Friday and beyond would make everyone in the Valley feel just a little better about the daunting task of building on this surprisingly fun season.

This is not a call to consider trading Booker. His 22 points on 7-of-17 shooting with some oddly deferential decisions late in the play-in game Tuesday against the Blazers shouldn’t be overblown.

But Tuesday’s loss to the Trail Blazers raised a question: What comes next for this team in improving this offseason, and how does evaluating Booker as the best player change the calculus of that?

Booker is under contract through 2029-30 (player option) and will make $57 million next year.

The Suns’ all-time leading scorer is just 29 years old but has plenty of mileage on him, and minor dings or not, his play in the second half of the season has come under the microscope.

Booker shot 48% in 34 pre-All-Star break fourth quarters and was an even better 53% in clutch-time shooting (20 games). Clutch possessions are in the final five minutes, when the teams were within five points or less of each other.

In 17 games since the All-Star break, he’s shooting 36% in the fourth quarter and an abysmal 30% shooting in clutch situations (10 games).

Phoenix as a team was the second-best clutch shooting team in the fourth quarters before the break (48%) and second-to-last (30%) in the back-half of the season.

So it’s hard not to pin the correlating swing there on the best player, even if the ecosystem around him with Jalen Green’s return and Dillon Brooks’ injury changed quite a bit.

While the Collin Gillespies, Royce O’Neales, Mark Williams and Oso Ighodaros of the roster got off to well-above-expected starts to the year, reality has come crashing down on many of them.

It has led to fans pleading for the insertion of youngsters (Williams, Khaman Maluach and Rasheer Fleming). Those are all players head coach Jordan Ott does not trust completely, based on Tuesday’s rotation.

True story: One anonymous trash-poster on X called for Ott’s job, asked he be replaced by former Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins and begged the Suns to not-very-specifically “navigate the cap crunch” and “prioritize size over small-ball.”

The post came with a graphic of a suggested starting unit and bench consisting of … exactly the same team as Phoenix has now.

The reality is this roster is as flawed as it was when we thought this team would struggle to win 30-some games. Ott’s team won 45 in the regular season.

Booker is still damn good. The yearly averages of 26.1 points on 46% shooting, 6.0 assists and 3.9 rebounds are nothing to laugh at — even if two years of being a below-average 3-point shooter changes his profile, taking him out of consideration to be one of the NBA’s best scorers.

Can he rebound to be top-15 player good? Just top-25? Is there a physical reason he tapered off that Phoenix can solve in the offseason?

Do the Suns need Friday and a first-round series to understand more about the makeup of this team? Even if they found more answers as the results went south in 2026 as opposed to 2025, the answer should always be “yes.”

Booker, though, has a game or more to at least take some definitive swings to say he’s still that dude.

That would help remind Suns fans that 2025-26 wasn’t a fluke. And that the steps toward improvement remain reachable with their star.

Devin Booker in must-win games over the years

• 2024 first round Game 4 vs. Minnesota: 49 points on 13-of-21 shooting, six assists
• 2023 conference semifinals Game 6 vs. Denver: 12 points on 4-of-13 shooting, eight assists
• 2022 conference semifinals Game 7 vs. Dallas: 11 points on 3-of-14 shooting, two assists, four turnovers
• 2021 NBA Finals Game 6 vs. Milwaukee: 19 points on 8-of-22 shooting, five assists, six turnovers
• 2020 bubble must-in vs. Dallas (a later win by Portland knocked Phoenix out of the playoffs): 27 points, five assists, no turnovers

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