Devin Booker Has a Case for the 2021–2022 NBA MVP Award: Here’s Why.
There is a gray area in every MVP debate as fans have yet to come to a consensus on what the exact criteria is when casting your “vote”.
While the conversations continue to happen, the three mainstays in every argument made for a player is be a winner, have the stats, and a general feel good story behind the player as narrative matters.
Devin Booker is the best player on a Phoenix Suns team that is on pace to win 60 games for the first time since the 2005 season.
Devin Booker is averaging 26.3 points, 5.1 rebounds, 5.0 assists on 46.2/37.5/87.0 splits.
Devin Booker survived one of the worst five year spans for an NBA organization since the turn of the century and is now competing for an NBA Championship at the age of 25.
He checks all the boxes and still finds himself on the outside looking in. What is he missing that has voters looking down on him? The Phoenix Suns released a very interesting fact following Bookers 49 points and 10 assists performance in the organizations 60th win this year.
“There have been 12 instances in NBA history of a player averaging 25/5/5 while playing for the team with the league’s best record. All 12 of those players won NBA MVP that season.”
The 13th overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft started his career by living at the bottom of the barrel, finishing with the worst record in the league three of his first four years. In this era of basketball, player movement is more prominent among the top stars. Once Book had solidified himself as more than just a stat sheet kind of player, he had every right to force his way out of a situation that could have drained the best years of his young career, but he stayed pat and saw it through. Now, it has culminated in being apart of a situation that any player could dream of.
The cornerstones of the MVP debate all include expectations that Booker has not only met but exceeded. In the month following the All-Star break, Booker averaged 29.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 7.3 assists in 12 games as the Suns posted a 10–2 record in those 12 games. The most impressive part? In eleven of those games the Suns were without their Hall of Fame point guard, Chris Paul.
With Booker on the court, the Phoenix Suns have been nothing short of a once in a lifetime offense. When Devin Booker hits the bench, the Suns have an offensive rating of 111.7, good enough for top 15 in the league. With Booker on the floor, that offensive rating jumps up to 119.5, which would rank them as the highest offensive rated team in NBA history.
Ironically enough, Booker has been faulted for the dominance of the Suns. From top to bottom, the Suns are perhaps the most well oiled machine in the NBA, lacking just about nothing in any department. And because of this the argument that rises is, “how valuable is Devin Booker?”
As great as Booker’s season has been, and as much as Suns fans and Booker fans would love to see him win MVP, the Suns dominance as a team does not need Devin Booker to take over on a nightly basis in order to stay in a game .The basic wants and needs of voters when it comes to determining the MVP, Devin Booker meets. His downfall is that his box score numbers are not going to match the overall dominance that the top three candidates have.
The Nuggets fall off a cliff on both ends of the floor without Jokic in the game. The 76ers rode the back of Joel Embiid while the uncertainty of the Ben Simmons drama unfolded. Giannis Antetokounmpo has continued to be the most dominant player on both ends of the court for what is arguably the fourth year in a row.
It seems out of the realm of possibility that anything so drastic happens in the final eight games to swing the MVP conversation in Bookers favor. However, his post All-Star weekend stretch has proved that for years to come he will find himself in his fair share of MVP conversations.
At 25 years old, the sky is the limit for the Valley Boy.
