Devin Booker accepted an extension of a contract of $ 145 million over two years with the Phoenix Suns, according to Charania Shams d’EspnKeeping the face of the Phoenix franchise under contract until 2030 as a stabilization agent hoped for in the midst of a period of uncertainty in Arizona.
The collective agreement between the League and its players stipulates that a contract covering a period of five or six seasons (including the options) can only be extended before the third anniversary of the contract signing, and that it can only be extended up to five years on the date of the New Deal signing.
Advertisement
Booker has another three seasons on the extension of supermax of $ 224 over four years which he accepted in 2022, putting the pen on paper on July 6. In total, Booker will be paid $ 316 million over the next five years.
That is to say: the Suns give Booker as much money as they are legally authorized to give it, as soon as they are legally authorized to give it. They will also pay him an average annual salary higher than any NFL player.
This should not surprise, given the way in which the owner of Suns Emphatique Mat Ishbia was earlier this season about the visualization of Booker like the cornerstone of everything that came in the valley – even if rumors about the interest of the Rockets for the trade for him are increasingly strong while Phoenix has dropped more and more in the classification of the Western Conference.
“Never happen,” said Ishbia, according to Tim Macmahon d’Espn. “It’s silly. So here’s what I’m going to tell you: I guess in the front row. To win an NBA championship, you must have a superstar. You must have a great player.”
Advertisement
It is also very compliant with Booker’s own public statements on the desire to be one of the “rare rare” players who spend his entire career with a franchise – even if this franchise has rarely tasted success during his mandate with.
“I am proud of the community of Phoenix, the people who have supported me since I was 18 when things were ugly,” Booker told Macmahon. “And the people who are with us, we have just failed to accomplish what we want. So I want to do it, and I want to do it here. It is the responsibility of being a franchise player, and I wear it with the honor. So, it might not be the prettiest right now, but we have to do it and I will do it.”
The Suns enter the NBA 2025-26 season which felt far enough to do it, after having failed to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2020, to exchange at everyone Kevin during and to back up the dice on yet another head coach … who, in his own way, would bring us back as much money as possible, as soon as possible.
Advertisement
While he was approaching the end of a deeply disappointing Sun season, Booker sounded … Finally, deeply disappointed.
“It was a slow bleeding,” Booker told journalists. “I feel in this way during the majority of the season. I think that the little glimpses of good stretches that we played gave me hope, and I probably gave hope to everyone. You never want it to be the pressures we have jumped: learning by victories and losses. Something that is excited at any time.
The attitude reflects leadership and the extension of Booker firmly cement it as the central figure of the establishment of this culture of learning, improvement and constant engagement. Hitting it with the greatest possible extension in the first opportunity is almost a way to say: “Hey, sorry for the whole” to dismantle a team that went to the NBA final and go from 64 victories to less than 0,500 in three years “- and a fairly strong indicator of Phoenix’s commitment in the reconstruction of someone who, in his career, has established one of the biggest and most appreciated.
Booker, 28, is the leader of all times of Phoenix in the points scored and the goals on the field in 3 points, and ranks in or near the top five in the history of the franchise in a series of other categories, including games, minutes and points per game. It is a quadruple All-Star, twice the all-nba selection and the double Olympic gold medalist. He is one of the first markers at three levels of the league: a high-efficiency finisher in painting, a mid-range elite shooter and a five alarms threat beyond the arc, that he pulls the plug or stops behind a ball screen.
Advertisement
The Kentucky product has also become a high-end primary playmaker, joining Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell as one of the four NBA players in the past five seasons to use at least 30% of his team’s offensive possessions, the dish is at more than a quarter of his teammates and making it less than 12% of the time. Even in a campaign below by His Standards 2024-25, Booker collected an average of 25.6 points and a career summit of 7.1 assists per match on 0.589 True Shoting-Brands which put him in the company of Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić and Jalen Brunson.
The Suns will need to book to be so good, productive and effective ounce as an option n ° 1 next season to have a hope of returning to the playoffs after another tumultuous intersaison. Phoenix pulled his head coach for the third consecutive spring, sent during the Rockets for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the overall choice n ° 10 of Khaman Maluach and five second round choices, treated his last two first round choices in Charlotte for the center, but the center of the shooting in the second round in Kent’s plan, as part of Kent Shasheer. Koby Brea, and would remain at an impasse on the situation of Bradley Beal.
Advertisement
Booker will have to arrive on the same wavelength with the new head coach Jordan Ott – as Ishbia and the new managing director Brian Gregory hired after a process in which Booker would have “had a level of involvement”. He will have to react to life alongside Beal in a now more given context, find a synergy with another goalkeeper similar style in green and develop a chemistry with a new battery of Pick-And-Roll partners in Williams and Maluach. He will have to rediscover his 3 -point stroke while facilitating a higher level because, in all likelihood, the main manure and playmaker of Phoenix.
If he can do all of this and produce at the individual level of the All-NBA in which he played in the previous three seasons … So maybe the Suns will have a chance to go back to the middle class of the West, in the running for the chance to escape the game tournament in the next two seasons. This is the task against Booker; It is not easy. If nothing else, he will be terribly well compensated to do so.
