Suns’ Devin Booker details a Mexico City practice run-in with vet P.J. Tucker

Devin Booker has showed his old Phoenix Suns vet P.J. Tucker all the respect on his come-up.

He’s credited Tucker for his role of pushing Booker to improve. Tucker’s player exclusives of Booker’s signature shoe is a hat-tip that can do something to explain their bond. But to our knowledge, Booker has never before explained in specifics how Tucker built him up by breaking him down.

Their most serious run-in, as Booker told it on D’Angelo Russell’s The Backyard Podcast that dropped over the weekend, came in January 2017. It was in the heart of Booker’s second NBA season.

Phoenix had a two-game series against the Mavericks and Spurs in Mexico City when Tucker and Booker had scuffle in practice between the games.

“We’re practicing and there’s a little crowd in there … like (an) NBA Cares event. We are not worried about the people that are watching. We get into it like we usually do — this is probably the most physical one,” Booker said. “(Tucker) comes in, soft headbutts to my chin so I had to get him off me real quick. They separate us. We both take different buses back to the hotel.

“I remember I clicked the hotel floor (on the elevator), go up to the players’ floor. It’s a long hallway, like 50 yards. Turn the corner, it’s just P.J. right there. P.J.’s coming down. We just walk head-to-head. I don’t know what’s about to happen. We about to finish what just happened at practice? He comes in, just wraps me up, just grabs me, like, ‘Rook, I can’t let you be a part of this man. This losing (expletive) man, this ain’t the real NBA. You’re too good for that. You need somebody that’s going to push you every day.’

“That’s a small example where people like, yeah, I was getting my head beat in the first few years but you can’t replicate those moments and the types of vets. My situation, I love how it went.”

Exhibit A to how Booker responds to challenges: He scored a then-career-high 39 points in both of those games in Mexico City, with a win over San Antonio following the hotel hallway moment.

Tucker and Booker have been open about their competitive relationship since then.

As a member of the Houston Rockets, Tucker told Arizona Sports’ Craig Grialou in 2017 that he would play mind games with Booker and push him toward frustration. He referenced the Mexico moment then.

“Yeah, it got real in Mexico. It got really real in Mexico after we lost (to Dallas last season),” Tucker said. “I was denying him the ball, manhandling him and he didn’t make any shots in practice so he was frustrated and it got to the point where he just had enough.”

Booker of course didn’t have an easy path to playing time as the 13th overall pick in 2015. He wasn’t in the rotation to start his rookie season but ended up playing 76 games and starting 51.

“In front of me, (Eric) Bledsoe … and Brandon Knight had both signed maxes. That’s our starting backcourt,” Booker said on The Backyard Podcast. “We had Sonny Weems, Archie Goodwin — I’m just talking about my position, so this is who I am matching up with every day.”

Booker averaged 13.8 points as a rookie. It bumped to 22.1 with him playing as a full-time starter in his second season, but it would take two more years for Booker to hit another efficient gear as he learned to navigate the NBA as the clear No. 1 scoring option on a team trying to find traction.

His early struggles individually and with the Suns as a whole helped him, he told Russell.

Tucker had a ton to do with that. And don’t look now, but after Booker’s run with USA Basketball in the Paris Olympics, it’s already on to his 10th season in the NBA.

“I don’t see it no more bruh — and I don’t want to sound like an old head, but ain’t nobody playing (one-on-one) after practice no more,” Booker said on the podcast. “That’s all we used to do. Practice wasn’t nothing because you can’t get no real good bump in in the NBA anymore in practice. Can’t even touch the starters for real. Bump them a couple times, practice is over.”

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