It’s time to start placing the Suns’ Devin Booker in the MVP race

There is nothing wrong with starting the discussion around the Phoenix Suns having two MVP candidates in Devin Booker and Chris Paul, then ending it by believing that a team with two most valuable players means they cancel each other out.

But I think if you hone in enough on that argument, really focus within it, you’ll see where the true nominee lies.

It’s Booker. Because for everything Paul does well on the Suns — and to not at all discredit Paul’s All-NBA-caliber season — Booker plays a part in it. That’s the symbiotic part of their relationship we’re going to talk about instead of the other way around.

And it’s why I think Booker should not only be thought of as an NBA MVP candidate right now but why he should be the Suns’ representative. Beyond the whole 25.5 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game on 44.6% shooting as the best player on the best team in the world that is sporting a winning percentage (.828) that has only been achieved six times in league history thing.

We’re going to take a journey through three phases of the game.

The first quarter tone-setter

Everyone by now knows the drill with Paul in the first quarter. He has always been a game manager, assessing what the opposing defense is attempting to accomplish. Paul will run an action designed to see if the team that likes to switch is indeed switching. But what about the angles they are taking on screens?

Are they going under or trying to fight through them? Is it a drop coverage on the pick-and-roll? How deep? What’s the low man helping from the weak side doing?

That’s all part of his craft. And if it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Morphed into those duties is also the obvious: getting other guys shots that need ’em early to find a rhythm, like Deandre Ayton and Mikal Bridges.

But sometimes these efforts are in vain. There needs to be a force of stabilization working beyond that, making sure the scoreboard is where it should be while all this is ongoing.

That is Booker. He’s always been a terrific scorer in the opening frame, shooting 50.5% during that time in the two seasons before Paul arrived in 2020-21.

Booker turned it up in Year 1 across from Paul, setting career highs in points (8.3) and field goal attempts (6.6) per first quarter. His efficiency was tremendous with 51.8% shooting.

He’s gone into overdrive this season, averaging 8.9 points for the first quarter (tied for second leaguewide) on more than seven attempts per. The great percentage is still there, a conversion rate of 48.3%.

The Suns will run a few sets through Booker to establish that bounce in the shooting guard’s step before defenses start to adapt. Head coach Monty Williams’ offense has such a strong foundation littered with trap doors of counters that Booker is almost always going to get put in the spots he wants for the first couple of minutes.

Defensive gameplans against the Suns early in his career were always drawn up to primarily stop Booker, a nod to the respect he gained leaguewide from the jump. This year, an offense that’s a well-oiled machine allows Booker more space in whatever tempo he prefers. Armed with that experience, Booker is a complete offensive player and has been for a while.

All of this translates to winning. The Suns outscore teams by 9.8 points per 100 possessions in the first quarter, when Booker is the focal point. That’s the top quarter net rating for Phoenix.

With Paul accentuating Booker to get a game rolling, it’s dynamic.

Sometimes it’s as easy as two sideline-out-of-bounds looks and one more traditional playbook pull, as was the case recently in Chicago.

Ah, letting him see the ball go in the bucket. That’s not ideal.

But now you just trap him! Easy enough! Wait, don’t forget abo—

Now it’s a matter of the defense choosing if it wants to bet on Booker’s one-on-one juice or send the traps. Want to see if he will burn you?

It’s not always in this order and sometimes he doesn’t even need the table to be set for him.

You’re picturing a little bit too much aggression, right? A chucker seeking his own looks at the detriment of the team. That is not Booker and has never been his game.

His assist-to-turnover ratio in first quarters is 2.42, the highest of any quarter.

And sometimes the overall scoring numbers aren’t there. If you listen to Williams talk about Booker’s scoring, you will hear him say it comes within what the Suns do.

For years as the Suns’ only viable offensive option, Booker learned through experience against every defense the opposition can throw at him. He knows how to dissect a defense through delegation and trusts his teammates when teams went to trap him off the ball. Even in the first quarters when it is his time to get going.

Tuesday’s win over the Los Angeles Clippers was a rare example when the Suns weren’t cashing in off this, a treacherous 29 seconds for Suns fans to observe that will trigger flashbacks to the late 2010s.

He still managed 13 of the Suns’ 22 points in that first quarter to keep them afloat, because of course he did.

Essentially, that guiding hand Paul provides to the offense in the first quarter becomes turbo-charged thanks to Booker.

Most importantly, Paul doesn’t have to do everything. Or, really, much at all. He’s managing the game, yes, but also himself. Because of Booker’s efforts in first quarters, the Suns usually have a cushion to work with — and Paul doesn’t have to dip into his gas tank for all that much.

It all leads to winning time

More often than not, that advantage Booker gives the Suns early extends through three quarters and down to the fourth. Now, Paul has that as he operates as chief commanding officer of the proceeding’s closing ceremonies. I can count on one hand how many times the Suns have had to chase a game in the second half, and Booker’s the guy to point to as the catalyst for that.

For those fourth quarters, it seems this is the time Paul has relished getting the ball back in his hands, where the Suns are putting up historic numbers when the score is within five points with under five minutes remaining, A.K.A. clutch minutes.

In Houston while playing with Paul from 2017-19, James Harden dominated this time to meh results. He shot 41.1% on his 73 attempts in 92 clutch minutes to Paul’s 27 for his 55 minutes in the 2017-18 season. And the year after, Harden’s 114 tries for 144 minutes went in 41.2% of the time to Paul’s baffling 16 shots in 68 minutes. Hard to tell why that guy keeps bouncing around.

Anyway, Paul’s shooting percentages in those moments by season have generally been pretty good. They were awesome in Oklahoma City two years ago, where Paul posted a 52.2 FG% on 90 shots and received some great production from his supporting cast. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander checked in at 28-for-48 (58.3%) and Dennis Schroder was 24-for-47 (51.1%). But both of them had a negative assist-to-turnover ratio.

That’s not the case for Booker, and more importantly, it’s a closer shot distribution so the Suns are not asking for as much out of Paul while also maximizing what he does.

Booker last season had 85 field goal attempts in clutch time, one more than Paul, and shot just 32.9% on them. He has dramatically improved that part of his game up to a clean 22-for-35 (62.9%) mark this season to Paul’s 22-for-39 (56.4%).

To compare it to OKC’s mismanagement of the ball, Booker has eight assists and only two turnovers.

Here are three games he iced out for a team with an elite defense, so keep in mind a lead by a possession or so is really all the Suns typically need.

And if teams want to throw those traps from the first quarter at him in the game’s final moments, uh, are you sure about that?

I’d like to think Paul is jawing at the sheer audacity the Dallas Mavericks showed by doubling one of them to give more space to the other.

That, however, is what Booker can do for the Point God and vice versa.

A plus defender, really!

Speaking of the clutch, it’s not all about when Paul or Booker have the ball. Booker’s defense has a whole lot to do with the full equation working out so beautifully.

Serving as the offensive linchpin on terrible teams with no help did not afford Booker the luxury of having the energy to help him improve as a defender. He also did not have the proper teammates around him. Booker said Tuesday it’s about having guys 1-5 on a string and the same page. That obviously wasn’t possible on 20-win squads that kept making significant changes to their rosters, mostly to get younger.

When Jamal Crawford told me in 2019 that winning is the only thing driving Booker, I could feel the eye-rolling from some fans when they’d read that quote.

In the last three years, though, Booker has more than proved that Crawford was telling no lies.

The 25-year-old two-guard has grown as a defender, showing the required effort and developed discipline needed to be a part of one of the NBA’s premier defenses.

Williams said Tuesday that Booker will finish his sentences on defensive coverages. In three years coaching him, Williams has seen that complete understanding expand. Booker’s defense is at the point where Williams believes Booker deserves to be brought up as a possible All-Defense player. Booker guards his position and will even pick up full court at times.

The biggest strength for the Suns defensively is they have no weak link. They are not going to “hide” Booker somewhere like so many other past MVP winners and candidates. Williams said Booker doesn’t want that, and really, none of their bunch does. Booker competes, and that allows Paul to most of the time defend the biggest non-threat where Paul can also contribute the most as a communicator from the weak side.

Sure, an offense will always find someone to target, and sometimes that is Booker. But he has proved since Paul got here that he’s an above-average defender.

Paul is able to take that help-side assignment because Mikal Bridges marks the primary offensive initiator and Booker gets number two. The Suns switch a lot as it is regardless, so if Booker was going to get exposed, we would have seen it already.

This is sound work through a screen on New York’s R.J. Barrett to even recover well enough to get a piece of the shot.

Booker showed in Tokyo for Team USA that he can play the role of full-court pest and glue guy. Sometimes we even see that in winning time.

Devin Booker is a good defender pic.twitter.com/WKFxaxDK8D

— Matt Petersen (@TheMattPetersen) January 25, 2022

He’s always had a great basketball IQ and Booker enjoys using verticality as a weak-side rim protector. It is Booker’s most underrated skill and something on Wednesday he credited to Golden State Warriors forward and Olympic teammate Draymond Green.

Booker said Green was one of the first guys he saw do it — a smaller guy defending the paint just by going straight up.

Booker has become really, really good at it.

Here it is in the clutch. Suns challenge and the foul gets overturned pic.twitter.com/CLH3bOSnfh

— Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) January 21, 2022

Oh, cool driving lane you got here, rookie. It would be a shame if someone stepped into it.

A 7-footer, you say?

And if you make the mistake of thinking Booker is someone you can just drive through, whew, do you have another thing coming. And that thing coming is one of Booker’s hands swatting your shot in your face.

The next play is what does it for me.

Booker calls out for Ayton to rotate to his new man in the corner after some switching. That’s communication. From there, Ayton’s not on it, so Booker recognizes this as the pass is going through the air and flies over there. That’s effort.

Finally, he pokes the ball away to complete the whole sequence. That’s know-how.

For the cherry on top to summarize Booker’s endless motor and how hard he competes in one clip, a Clippers pass into the corner here nearly forces Luke Kennard to touch the baseline. Booker knows the scouting report and jams into the shooter with his closeout, forcing him baseline to his off hand too.

Kennard obliges and almost steps out of bounds because of Booker’s pressure, so he hurls a pass that is intercepted by Jae Crowder. From Booker’s perspective, he could see a two-on-two developing and just jog his way back as a trailer shooter.

Nah. He — apologies in advance — books it for a full-court sprint.

Those were the two biggest plays of the victory from a 25-point per game scorer doing glue guy things. This is where you can put your dapper-looking talking head hat on in your fresh-pressed narrative suit to talk about leading by example if you want. I’ll leave that to you.

Defensive metrics are wonky and unreliable, so no numbers here, but take my word and the video for it that Booker has been a plus on the defensive end this year and that it should feature prominently in your thinking of how you value him as a player.

Is he the most valuable in the league? Hard to say right now. Let’s check back in 20 games later to see where everything lies.

It’s difficult to deny the bonkers production of Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic right now. It’s also harder to turn down a member of the Suns the longer they keep this level of winning up.

Based on the way he impacts the game, I’d pick Booker. Wednesday’s ugly win over the Houston Rockets encapsulated this pretty well.

Booker shot a poor 7-of-22 but made a handful of plays in the fourth quarter after Chris Paul had been ejected that contributed directly to winning without scoring a field goal, and all while playing the entire second half.

Both as a ball-mover:

And defender:

If the Suns win 65-plus games, the natural response is to point at Paul as the conductor and make him Phoenix’s defacto MVP candidate. It is logical thinking, but as I laid out, Booker is the fuel that allows the train to keep on huffing at top speed and not lose any pace despite its leader turning 37 in May.

To me, that’s more valuable, and might be the most when we put a bow on this regular season.

All statistics and video via NBA.com/stats

Follow @KellanOlson