Devin Booker's 43 points aren't in dispute, and neither should your admiration for them. Seventeen-of-25 shooting, seven rebounds, seven assists, and a Suns home-opener scoring record that had stood since Charles Barkley hung 37 on the Clippers back in 1992. That's a real number against a real name, and Phoenix fans who want to enjoy it have every right to. What they don't have the right to do is pretend it answers the question their own defense asked all night.
Golden State showed up without Stephen Curry, without Draymond Green, without Brandin Podziemski, without Al Horford, and without Kristaps Porzingis, playing its third game in four days, and still put up 122 points and shot 43.6 percent from three as a team. A rookie most casual fans couldn't have named a week ago, Yaxel Lendeborg, hit six threes and scored 26. De'Anthony Melton added 25 on efficient shooting. At one point in the third quarter, this undermanned, winless Warriors team ripped off a 12-0 run and took the lead against a healthy Phoenix team that had Booker playing out of his mind.
The instinct to wave that off because the Suns won anyway is understandable, and it's wrong. Winning a track meet against a team playing its backups just proves your offense was good enough to outscore a problem that a deeper, rested opponent will make you pay for. Lendeborg wasn't getting contested, heavily guarded looks late in the shot clock. He was getting the kind of airy catch-and-shoot threes that come from a scheme failing to close out, and Melton found plenty of room of his own. Booker's next 40-point night won't fix that, because Booker isn't on the floor when the other team is letting it fly from the corner.
Rating
RatingThe fan case for ignoring all this is simple and it's not dumb: give the ball to your best player in winning time and let him cook, and if he's doing that, who cares what the box score says about the other end. Fine, except Phoenix needed every one of those 43 points specifically because the defense let a shorthanded team hang around into the fourth quarter. The margin for letting Booker clean up with heroics gets a lot thinner the moment Golden State gets Curry back, or the moment Phoenix runs into a team with actual perimeter shot-makers in its regular rotation instead of its emergency lineup.
There were signs worth liking. Luke Kennard, making his season debut after missing the opener hurt, hit three of five from deep for 11 points, exactly the kind of movement shooting this roster needs. Phoenix has now won its home opener for five straight seasons. None of that changes what the perimeter defense looked like for stretches of this particular game.
RTGGolden State is 0-3 for the first time in nineteen years. That's their problem to sort out. It doesn't mean Phoenix's defense is fine. The Suns are 1-1. Two games isn't a sample that tells you much, but it's enough to tell you that a defense which let a team missing four rotation pieces shoot over 43 percent from deep has work to do. That work doesn't go away just because Devin Booker was brilliant enough to paper over it for one night. Enjoy the record. Don't confuse it with a fix.
