Why Devin Booker’s two-year, $145 million extension is a desperate overpay from a rudderless Suns franchise

The Phoenix Suns have spent the best part of the last six months desperately trying to start Bradley Beal outside the city. Forget for a moment from his non-exchange clause. Even if he would have canceled it, no one wanted it. It was not because Beal was bad, in itself. He has an average of 17 points per match with a relatively effective shot on a list that did not really suit him. He was just too paid. We live in the most frugal era in the history of the NBA. Someone is worth, let’s say, $ 25 million a year becomes toxic when he earns $ 50 million.

Which brings us to Devin Booker.

The local star of Phoenix is ​​worth more than $ 25 million a year, but he is about to earn a lot more than $ 50 million. Wednesday, he would have been agreed an extension estimated at two years of $ 145 million with the Suns. The exact amount is not yet final. Booker has another three years on his existing contract, the new kick thereafter and should pay him 35% of the ceiling for the 2028-29 season, or 105% of his previous salary, the largest. It doesn’t matter where the actual number landed, it will fall into the first handful of the NBA’s best paid players for the 2028-29 and 2029-30 seasons. And this is where the problems arise. Again, the Suns are preparing to pay a very good player at the absolute market summit.

It will be an important too much step.

The problem of “superstar”

Since Mat Ishbia bought the Suns, they worked as if Booker was an untouchable superstar. When Tim Macmahon of ESPN asked questions about the trading potentially Booker – which Phoenix should probably do taking into account his disastrous circumstances – he interrupted the question and dealt with it as a non -starter.

Suns need to exchange Devin Booker, and they put themselves to themselves if they continue to claim the opposite

Sam Quinn

“Never occurs,” said Ishbia. “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.”

Booker is a great player. The question is how great we are talking about. He made two All-NBA teams, the same number as Julius Randle, whose new contract is booming about half of Booker. One of these All-NBA selections occurred in 2024, while he was the seventh goalkeeper chosen in the new format without position. During the previous year, he would not have cut. Booker was the last player chosen, and even it was partly due to the new rule of the All-NBA League, the minimum of 65 games. Notable players who barely missed the eligibility cup that year included Joel Embiid, Donovan Mitchell, Trae Young and Kyrie Irving. By our most basic measuring stick, Booker was generally a player among the first 15 or did not cut.

Most advanced measures tell the same story. He never finished in the top 15 of the NBA in Vorp, winning actions by 48 minutes or in a plus-me box. Last season, he ranked 72nd, 80th and 90th in these measures, respectively. If you are looking for a more fundamental statistic, it is mainly a marker that has never ranked among the first five of the NBA in points per game. His best 61.8% career shooting season is less than Stephen Curry’s career average Of 62.5% and is only a nuance above the career bar of 60.8% of James Harden.

These guys are the bar.

When you are among the highest paid guards in the NBA, it is how offensively you need to be. You must essentially be a MVP candidate, as the supperstars aforementioned were so often, to justify earning this kind of money at that time when you are not a very impactful defensive player. At the very least, you must be a perpetual choice all-nba like Damian Lillard, which, once again, Booker was not.

The clock turns

And remember, the figures we have covered so far have been the Booker peak. It may already be behind him. He is about to enter his 29 -year season. This extension will cover its seasons of 32 years and 33 years. If he is not an infallible NBA player of the top-15 now, what will he be? Remember that for all the drop that Beal has endured since he signed his supermax agreement in 2022, he has just played his 31 year season. Booker was more lasting during their career, but it is difficult to imagine that it will be better in three years than today. Realisticly, at that time, we are probably talking about an All-Star on the fringe like maybe the best paid player in basketball.

You might be able to get it under certain circumstances. Let’s say, for example, you had an option n ° 1 greater than you wrote and that you still have on a recruit contract in counterweight. This will certainly not be the case for the Suns, because they do not control any of their own first round choices until 2032, and even this choice is frozen.

Perhaps Booker could recruit another star to play for Phoenix and justify his salary in this way, just as the Clippers once justified the abandonment of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, five first-round choices and two first-round exchanges to get Paul George because he also secured the superior Kawhi Leonard. But how would Phoenix functionally acquire such a player? They will have no choice of draft to exchange, and they will have trouble generating a ceiling space large enough to sign a maximum free agent, because they will not only have a huge Booker contract on their books, but, if they give up Beal and embrace as planned, they will also have a giant dead cap on their assessment for the next five seasons. Heck, by the last year of the Booker contract, even the current recruit Khaman Maluach will be on a veteran contract at the market rate.

What does Phoenix think?

So why are the Suns doing that? It seems relatively simple. Whether or not Booker is the caliber of the superstar necessary to justify a contract of this size is apparently out of words for Ishbia. Booker is the star he has. He is the local player to whom fans are (rightly so!) Attached. It is the last piece of connective tissue of the extremely successful Western conference champion they had before Ishbia arrived, and therefore the last hope that this Sun basketball era can be recovered. In a completely cold and rational world, the Suns would probably not have done this. They would have exchanged Booker at the start of this offseason for a mountain of assets to launch a necessary reconstruction.

But we are in the real world, and in the real world, you cannot thwart your star by refusing to extend it if you have immediate competitive ambitions. The Suns, rationally or not, always believe that they have a chance to build a real winner in the immediate future. If this is the path you follow, it requires the membership of the star who has just looked at the team he almost took in a championship collapsed all around him. Obtaining this membership almost always means paying it, whether wise or not.

It comes at a price. When writing these lines, Draftkings Sportsbook set a total line of 30.5 for the Suns next season. In the Western Conference, only jazz should earn less. Vegas has already been wrong, but at the very least, the wait is that Phoenix will either be a lottery or play team in the near future. They have very few ways for improvement given their limited capital and the money that Beal is likely to leave in their books. They may play in the deepest west conference in history, and most of its best teams are reasonably young and improve or should hold stable. The Suns could theoretically improve enough to make the noise of short -term qualifying series. It is simply not particularly likely.

Another unchalimable contract?

If so, where does it leave Phoenix in a year or two? How happy will Booker be in a team whose season always ends in April? How much should the management of Suns be satisfied with results like this? What happens if a business is not only advised on the line, but necessary for both parties? Well, at this stage, having booked on a contract which pays it to the district of $ 70 million per year makes it much more difficult to exchange.

Without a non-exchange clause, it is difficult to imagine that Booker is as impregnated as Beal, but how many teams will even have the matching salary of his books to call someone so expensive? This is particularly true as the middle class of the NBA is shrinking. Most of the competitive teams that Booker could make people make in a few years will probably already have a maximum or two player. They may not have a handful of 20 to 30 million dollars of offers to accumulate for another Max player. They can only have another ultra-coto contract, but attached to a worse or subject to injuries. Think of the contracts for which Russell Westbrook was negotiated on his supermax agreement: Chris Paul, who was, at the time, considered very too paid, and John Wall, who was ultimately.

It is rarely easy to match money on players at the top of the market. The current ABC makes it more difficult. If the Suns need to negotiate Booker, the buying team will probably have to use a good salary to do so, and therefore offer less asset compensation in the agreement. More likely, they will try to send money. Overall, this contract probably reduces Booker’s commercial value in the future.

If the Suns can indeed make their way in the line, the point is not object. They will not need to exchange Booker if they win. Of course, they thought they would win with Beal too, and look at where it brought them. Just due to the avoidance of the non-exchange clause, the Booker contract does not come with the same degree of risk of decline. But according to the way Booker is aging, there is still a real chance that it will become one of the worst NBA contracts. It is an overpayer of a team with little immediate hope and no clear plan to improve their long-term perspectives.