Devin Booker is heating up like the Phoenix summer as the All Star guard is shooting lights out as the Suns evened their playoff series with Denver at 2-2 after a 129-124 win on Sunday.
The
Moss Point (Miss.) standout combined for 83 points with a 79.1 shooting percentage in a pair of wins this weekend in the Western Conference semifinals against the top-seeded Nuggets. In the third quarter of Sunday's Game 4, Booker buried all six of his shots, including a pair of 3-pointers in the final minute to extend the Suns lead from 92-90 to 98-92 heading into the final frame.
Booker has been scoring in bunches since his time at Moss Point starting in the 2011-12 high school basketball season.
His father Melvin Booker was an assistant coach for the team and a former NBA guard. The elder Booker's high scoring performance in the NBA was 16 points for the Golden State Warriors in 1997 against a Phoenix squad led by Kevin Johnson and Jason Kidd.
Devin began his high school career at
Grandville (Mich.) in 2010-11 but transferred after his freshman season. In Mississippi he worked tirelessly with his father, who had just wrapped up a professional career spanning more than a decade — mostly overseas.
The hard work paid off.
Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns is the all-time scoring leader at Moss Point (Miss.) with 2,538 career points. (Photo: Randy Sartin)
As a sophomore, Booker averaged 22.7 points a game and had a 54-point performance that season. His average shot up to 29.7 points per game as a junior as he added eight rebounds and four assists per contest as the Tigers were within one game of the state playoffs.
He led Moss Point to the state semifinals in his senior campaign while averaging 30.9 points per game. In a game against Ballard (Louisville, Ky.) that featured future NBA players Kelan Martin and Jamil Wilson, Booker went off for 40 points. Booker left Moss Point as the school's all-time leading scorer with 2,518 career points.
He was rated as the No. 8 shooting guard in the country by 247Sports and was a McDonald's All American.
In college, he linked up at Kentucky with McDonald's teammates Trey Lyles of
Indianapolis Arsenal Technical (Indianapolis, Ind.), Karl-Anthony Towns of
St. Joseph (Metuchen, N.J.) and Tyler Ulis of
Marian Catholic (Chicago Heights, Ill.) on a squad already featuring Aaron Harrison, Andrew Harrison, Dakari Johnson, Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein. After a 38-1 season that ended in the Final Four, Booker declared for the 2015 NBA Draft.
The Suns took him 13th overall and he won a gold with Team USA Basketball in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics about a month after leading the Suns to the NBA Finals. Booker has averaged 23.9 points per game for the Suns across eight seasons, but the playoffs are a different book entirely. In 41 career playoff games, the shooter has averaged 28.4 points per game.
The 2023 playoff chapter has been his best yet. In five games against the Los Angeles Clippers, Booker averaged 37.2 points per game and is sitting at 36.3 over four games against the Nuggets along with 8.8 assists.
