Devin Booker faces similar questions to Young defensively, as he ranked 743rd in dRAPM. The sample sizes are so small that individual defensive metrics are almost inherently unreliable for the playoffs, but observationally, he was more locked in during the postseason. For example, he had several good sequences of weakside help during the Finals when Phoenix changed its assignments to have Booker, rather than Chris Paul, be the player patrolling the baseline while (not) guarding P.J. Tucker.
Many, including me, were critical of his offensive approach in the Finals, where the Bucks’ scheme of guarding him one-on-one for the most part resulted in a lot of midrange jumpers. While Booker is an
elite midrange scorer, one of only a handful of players to hit more than 50 percent of their self-created 2-point jumpers last season, pushing him toward those shots and away from rim attacks (and attendant free throws drawn) and drive-and-kicks to teammates helped transform a great scorer into a just a pretty good one for that series:
Devin Booker Playoff Splits
| OPPONENT | FTA/FGA | AST/FGA | %RIM FGA |
|---|
|
You must be registered for see images attach
Lakers | 0.390 | 0.306 | 19.0% |
|
You must be registered for see images attach
Nuggets | 0.324 | 0.243 | 5.4% |
|
You must be registered for see images attach
Clippers | 0.316 | 0.206 | 15.4% |
|
You must be registered for see images attach
Bucks | 0.224 | 0.168 | 13.3% |
In what was overall a spectacularly successful first playoff run, Booker can be forgiven for what amounts to a slight decision-making miscalibration in one series. It’s hard to prove statistically, but the ability to solve that kind of playoff puzzle based on past trials and errors is one of the reasons playoff experience tends to correlate with deeper postseason runs. One needs only to look to Booker’s Finals opponent, Antetokounmpo, to see an example of a player figuring out some of the defensive tactics that stymied him in earlier series in previous years.
As with Young, Booker has to make a number of small improvements to reach Tier 2. The first is finding offensive balance between shot creation and playmaking discussed above. It would also help if he became a little more reliable as a 3-point shooter, where despite his reputation in that area, Booker’s accuracy has been just OK, even controlling for the difficulty of his shot attempts (his 39.8 percent career mark on uncontested 3s is slightly above average but doesn’t really approach the elite status of the Currys, Robinsons and Porter Jr.’s of the world who are in the mid-40s or higher). The third is his clearest weakness: defense, where being a little more consistently competitive would go a long way. Those are the areas that separate Booker from the perimeter players in Tiers 2 and 1.
