Devin Booker has earned more than beyond the benefit of the doubt when he has the occasional struggles for the Phoenix Suns, but that benefit has reached its limit this season after a 121-111 loss to the Miami Heat on Saturday.
Booker was 6-of-16 for 21 points with seven assists and five turnovers. He has now shot 40% or worse in back-to-back games for the third time this season. In the previous four seasons, Booker has only done that 11 times, so nearly three times per year, [per Stathead](https://stathead.com/basketball/player-streak-finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=bookede01&timeframe=seasons&year_min=2021&streak_length=2&scomp%5B1%5D=lt&sval%5B1%5D=0.400&sstat%5B1%5D=fg_pct). And there’s still 60 games to go this season.
His season numbers are slightly down but do not tell the tale of a player that does not look like himself. As said in this space previously, Booker is a player so constantly in rhythm that it is glaring when he is not. It seems like a coin flip this season as to when he has it, which is as unexplainable as it is not nearly good enough for one of the best players in the NBA.
Miami (11-10) mauled him early, especially off the ball, and Booker responded to it while also attempting to use it to his advantage by drawing fouls. He did not get those whistles, and from there, just kept missing shots. The Heat were sending doubles his way often, but again, this is nothing new. Booker has been excellent at finding his windows to catch the defense lacking when those doubles don’t come. He is poor at it right now.
A brief blip in the tail-end of the third quarter of two buckets and two assisted baskets was the only sign of anything flowing for Booker. It came far too late in a third quarter the Suns (12-10) were jumped in for the fifth straight game. They are now -58 in them across that time and it lost Phoenix the game on Saturday.
Yes, Kevin Durant (left ankle sprain) remained out. But to continue defying the “Suns are cooked without KD” narrative, Phoenix was 5-2 without Durant last season. In those seven games, Booker shot 71-of-133 (53.4%) with 27.8 points, 7.3 assists and 3.3 turnovers per game. He did so while starting alongside one player, either Keita Bates-Diop or Chimezie Metu, that is no longer in the NBA.
In the nine games without Durant this year, Booker is shooting 42.4% (72-of-170) with 25.2 points, six assists and 2.6 turnovers per game.
We are now beyond the “he always starts slow” and beyond the “he’s probably hurt and just needs a break” portions of the proceedings. Diagnosing exactly what is impacting Booker goes beyond what we’re seeing on the court, and that just gets into reckless speculation. Booker, even on horrible teams, was able to rise above the circumstances around him and play at a very high level.
It’s coming. He will return to that form soon enough. We need to get a few more months into this season, perhaps even all the way through it, before we trust a handful of weeks over a decade.
At the moment, though, he can’t. And that’s on a much better team while also coming off back-to-back games when Phoenix’s supporting cast has played well.
Royce O’Neale scored a career-high 23 points in the starting lineup while Grayson Allen hit five 3s and Monte Morris added a dozen points for a bench unit that outscored Miami 47-22 without Ryan Dunn (left ankle soreness) and Jusuf Nurkic (right thigh contusion).
But the Suns’ defensive lapses are so pronounced at the moment that the lulls can swing entire games, just like their last two losses. Phoenix has been so engaged and solid defensively through a quarter of the season that it was easy to cast aside preseason fears of the Suns’ primary weakness coming on that end. But if these disconnected stretches continue, it was too early to make that kind of declaration.
Miami punked the Suns in the second half physically, living in the paint. The Heat produced 62 points in the paint to the Suns’ 32, and Phoenix was only +5 at the foul line.
Booker’s scattered efficiency is when it would be huge for the Suns to get star performances from Bradley Beal but he couldn’t do it on Saturday. Beal shot 5-of-18.
All five Heat starters scored at least 14 points and combined to shoot 61.7%.
[Follow @KellanOlson](https://twitter.com/KellanOlson)