The drill ITSELF is pretty standard as far as draft workouts are concerned. A player starts on offense and stays on offense as long as he continues to score. As he misses, he turns to the rescue. As soon as he allows a bucket, he spins out and the next player turns around - it's a face-to-face game. The Phoenix Suns regularly used it as a part of their draft-evaluation process.
When Devin Booker came to the knockout line in 2015, he was just the latest prospect the Suns were looking at with a 13th pick. A glimpse again.
"He just kept scoring," recalled former general manager Ryan McDonough. "No one could stop him. He just kept scoring and scoring that we were like, 'Okay, we've seen enough. It's really impressive. Let's move on to the next drill. We only have an hour or so'. There are so many things that we want to do.'"
Booker didn't have it. With some four-letter words, he let the brass of the sans know that he could not finish the drill unless someone stopped him.
"I think he was 18 at the time," McDonough says. "And for an 18-year-old kid to say 'F that' to a bunch of executives and coaches - we were a little surprised by that.
"But we loved it too."
Booker did not start in his lone season at the University of Kentucky – he was not even offered as a lottery pick when he was initially announced for the 2015 draft. But after averaging 27 points in his first NBA playoffs and scoring 27 points in Game 1 of the 2021 NBA Finals, Devin Booker isn't going to leave the stage unless someone stops him.
Shortly after being drafted, then-assistant coach Earl Watson asked Booker a simple question: How good do you want to be?
Without skipping a beat, Booker looked at Watson and said, "One of the best ever."
"When he said so," Watson says, "it allowed me to hold him accountable for those words."
When it came to the league, Booker was great at catching and shooting. Watson told him that was not enough.
He was great at driving straight to the basket. Watson told her it wasn't enough.
They'll meet at Sun's exercise facility or Arizona state gyms. Booker lived near campus in Tempe. He would text Watson to come to work at all hours of the day – or at night – with himself and his older brother, Devon Wade.
They will work on how to play off the bounce, on his handle and manipulate the defence. When Booker was good, he heard praise. When he was not there, Watson would lie down in it.
"A lot of times I'll come out of the game and I'll see his dad," Watson says, "and he'll be like, 'Did you kick him out? ok, good. I won't have to.'"
Booker wanted to push. He moved from his mother's home in Grand Rapids, Michigan to Moss Point, Mississippi, so that his father, Melvin, who played professionally in the NBA and overseas, could push him.
"When Devin played with my friends, I didn't protect him," says Melvin Booker. "I'll play against him. I'll let him argue—there are always arguments in the open gym—and I let him fight his battles against these old guys.
"I'll sit on the sidelines, like, 'Handle it yourself.'"
Watson struck the same deal when Booker arrived in the NBA. He put defensive stopper PJ Tucker on him in practice and never called a foul.
"You have two elite players who are very intense," says Watson. "One is gifted aggressively, one is gifted defensively. So I'll let it go - let the iron sharpen the iron."
Once, Watson says, the practice fight got so heated, Booker and Tucker almost came to blows.
"They were grabbing, banging the body, holding, locking," he says. "And one of our coaches was like, 'We have to break this.' I said, 'You can't break it. It's important to the book.'"
What did none of them know then -- and how could they? -- Will they face each other in the NBA Finals after six years?
"It was my job to make him better," Tucker said on Monday. "I knew what I had to do, what he was going to see, and what was coming and what he needed to be prepared for."
It was hard to see greatness coming from anyone in a team mired in a decade of despair. The Phoenix had churned through lottery picks and missed the playoffs for 11 straight years prior to this season. The Suns' 306–489 regular-season record from 2009–10, their final playoff performance through the previous season, was the third-worst performance in the NBA.
But Booker stood out.
Tyson Chandler, who played with Booker from 2015 to 2019, says, "I would have been yelling at everyone who wanted to hear, 'Yo, the book is that dude. Trust me.'" The team that hadn't made the playoffs in five years—and hadn't made it to the NBA Finals—in more than two decades.
"That organization was after the f---ed up [Steve] Nash years," Chandler says.
Chandler won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, an Olympic gold medal with Team USA and a defensive player award in 2012, and became a first-time All-Star in 2013.
Initially seen as a key recruit for LaMarcus Aldridge, the Suns signed Chandler properly as free agency, then brought him in as a surprise guest at their recruiting meeting with the former Trail Blazers big man. .
Aldridge eventually signed with the San Antonio Spurs instead, but by the end of the summer, Chandler was convinced he could soon be part of a different star tandem in Phoenix.
"Too many crooks, they're taking in too much information," Chandler says. "Their eyes are wide open. They're moving at a hundred miles an hour. With Devin, you were able to talk to him and he was able to process."
Booker asked Chandler everything. How was the Olympics? What were the western conference finals like? What was it like to win the championship?
"People talk about the [losing] situation I was in and how it was unfair to me, but I always see the bright side in it," Booker said. "Being able to develop a relationship with someone like Tyson, who has accomplished everything I want to do in this league...
"I always leaned on that. I still do."
And what did Chandler tell them about how those experiences were?
"Once you've tasted it," said Booker, "there's nothing else in the world that you want."
After the Sons won Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals, Booker sat quietly at a table in the back of a lounge at Staples Center, eating a plate of sushi while Chris Paul addressed the media.
Normally, players would wait in the locker room before entering the news conference room, to avoid any additional risk. But Booker was content to wait and listen while Paul was talking.
Whether from a seasoned center like Chandler or his new superstar backcourt teammate, if there should be any insight, Booker is there to glean it.
"I watch every game and that was before I was in the NBA," Booker said. "So I've been a fan of his for a long time, and I've learned a lot from him this year."
It's not lost on Booker that his first chance at winning it all might as well be Paul's last—that he reached the NBA Finals in his first playoff, while Paul eventually made it to the league after 16 years and 13 playoff appearances. has made.
Booker said, "I have a lot of respect for him as a man, not even as a basketball player, just understanding how bad he wants it and how much time it takes. " "Sixteen years, that's a long time. ... Me and Deandre [Ayton] are sitting here, Mikael [Bridge], this is our first time here."
But this isn't the first time Booker has imagined himself in moments like this.
"It was like he was preparing himself for it the whole time," Chandler says. "A lot of questions he wanted to ask me were, 'How's that moment?'
"Once you're there," Chandler told her, "you're just so free and loving every minute. It's the highest basketball competition you'll ever face in your life. Every single moment, every single one." Right."
He could understand portraying Booker.
"He just wanted to live in those stories," Chandler says, "and in those moments."
And he is not leaving the court until someone throws him out.