SUNS NEWS: 2021 FINALS EDITION SUNS vs BUCKS

[Superbone]

I've also thought about the medical/training staff in recent weeks. Gotta give them a ton of credit.

But ZoomCare and WebMD jokes are still fun to make.

Don’t forget Teledoc (full disclosure, I own shares of their stock)

[Flagrant Fowl]

[Flagrant Fowl]

That NBA Finals logo on the back made me pinch myself.

[Flagrant Fowl]

[ShelC]

This really sucks. Don't want to hear about other teams' injuries anymore

[Split T]

Ugh, hate that

[Indy]

Shit. That really sucks. So out all next season?

[Indy]

I guess it depends on the extent of the tear.

[Split T]

Ya probably all next year. Backup big just became an even bigger offseason priority. Luckily I think we can survive without Saric in this series as Milwaukee playing their bigs gives us a huge advantage anyways.

Could really use a Jalen Smith offseason leap.

[ShelC]

Usually 6-9 months to he'll probably miss most of next season. Hopefully Stix makes some progress or Jones will have to find someone not named Frank Kaminsky to handle backup minutes.

[Suns_Dave]

Ugh, knew it was probably serious when it happened. Feel for Dario.

In the mean time, Torry Craig probably gets most of Dario's minutes now. Frank looked unplayable last night.

[AmareIsGod]

Poor guy. You could see him start to cry walking to the training room. He knew. He's worked hard and had an up and down season but made some big 3's for us this postseason and didn't back down in the post when the opposing center had size and position over him. I gave him a lot of crap during the season but he can be a capable backup PF or C when called upon.

[Split T]

Saric has two more years on his contract, so he should get another chance even if he misses all next season. Might be tough though as I assume we’ll have replaced him in the lineup. Injuries really suck.

[Furlanfufi]

The Denver fan who got beaten is probably trying to kill himself now

[JeremyG]

We beat the Lakers playing Frank over Dario, so we'll have to just do it again!

[Bucktastic365]

Does anyone have ESPN+?

There is an article on now about the rise of Booker, and I'm dying to read it

[Superbone]

Poor guy. You could see him start to cry walking to the training room. He knew. He's worked hard and had an up and down season but made some big 3's for us this postseason and didn't back down in the post when the opposing center had size and position over him. I gave him a lot of crap during the season but he can be a capable backup PF or C when called upon.

Yeah, I feel really bad for Saric. Especially after he said it was “a dream come true” about playing in the Finals. Luckily for us, the Suns are capable of covering for the loss. Good thing we got Craig! And Frank will have to be the next man up if necessary. He held his own defensively at least in one possession last night.

[Superbone]

Does anyone have ESPN+?

There is an article on now about the rise of Booker, and I'm dying to read it

I would love to as well.

[3rdside]

From ESPN …

Spoiler: show/hide

NBA Finals 2021: The rise of Devin Booker began with choice words at a pre-draft workout
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CP3, Booker and the Suns take Game 1 of the NBA Finals (3:37)
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9:00 PM
Ramona Shelburne
ESPN Senior Writer
THE DRILL ITSELF is pretty standard as far as draft workouts go. A player starts on offense and stays on offense as long as he keeps scoring. As soon as he misses, he rotates over to defense. As soon as he allows a bucket, he rotates out and the next player rotates in -- it's a game of one-on-one. The Phoenix Suns routinely used it as a part of their draft-evaluation process.

When Devin Booker got into the knockout line in 2015, he was just the latest prospect the Suns were looking at with the 13th pick. Then, a glimpse.

"He just kept scoring," former general manager Ryan McDonough recalled. "Nobody could stop him. He just kept scoring and scoring to the point that we were like, 'OK, we've seen enough. This is really impressive. Let's move on to the next drill. We only have an hour or so and there's a number of things we want to do.'"

Booker wasn't having it. With a few four-letter words, he let the Suns' brass know there was no way he was ending the drill until 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 group of executives and coaches -- we were a little surprised by it.

"But we also loved it."

Booker didn't start in his lone season at the University of Kentucky -- he wasn't even projected as a lottery pick when he initially declared 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 is not going to leave the stage until someone stops him.

SHORTLY AFTER BEING drafted, then-assistant coach Earl Watson asked Booker a simple question: How good do you want to be?

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Without skipping a beat, Booker looked at Watson and said, "One of the best to ever play."

"When he said that," Watson says, "that allowed me to hold him accountable for those words."

Booker was great at catching and shooting when he came into the league. Watson told him that wasn't enough.

He was great at driving straight to the basket. Watson told him that wasn't enough.

They'd meet at the Suns' practice facility or the gym at Arizona State. Booker lived near the campus in Tempe. He would text Watson to come work out at all hours of the day -- or night -- along with him and his older brother, Davon Wade.

They'd work on playing off the bounce, on his handle and how to manipulate defenses. When Booker was good, he heard praise. When he wasn't, Watson would lay into him.

"There'd be times when I come out of a game and I'd see his father," Watson says, "and he'd be like, 'Did you cuss him out? OK, cool. I won't have to.'"

Booker wanted to be pushed. He'd moved from his mother's house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Moss Point, Mississippi, so 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," Melvin Booker says. "I would play against him. I would let him get in arguments -- in open gyms there's always arguments -- and I let him have his own battles against these old men.

"I'd sit on the sidelines, like, 'Handle it yourself.'"


Devin Booker, 24, says he's "learned so much" from his 36-year-old backcourt teammate, Chris Paul. Together, they've led the Suns to their first Finals since 1993. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
Watson took the same tack when Booker got to the NBA. He put defensive stopper P.J. Tucker on him in practices and never called fouls.

"You got two elite players who are very intense," Watson says. "One is offensively gifted, one is defensively gifted. So I'd just let it go -- let iron sharpen iron."

One time, Watson says, the practice battle grew so heated, Booker and Tucker nearly came to blows.

"They were grabbing, body-slamming, holding on, locking up," he says. "And one of our coaches was like, 'We got to break this up.' I said, 'You can't break it up. This is critical for Book.'"

What neither of them knew then -- and how could they? -- was they'd be facing off against each other six years later, in the NBA Finals.

"It was my job to make him better," Tucker said on Monday. "I knew what I had to do, for what he was going to see, and what was coming and what he needed to be ready for."

IT WAS HARD to see greatness from anyone on a team that had been mired in a decade of disappointment. Phoenix had churned through lottery picks and missed the playoffs for 11 straight years before this season. The Suns' 306-489 regular-season record from 2009-10, their last playoff appearance, through last season was the third worst in the NBA.

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But Booker stood out.

"I would be screaming to everybody, anybody who wanted to listen, 'Yo, Book is that dude. Trust me,'" says Tyson Chandler, who played with Booker from 2015 to 2019. Chandler was signed in 2015 to help turn around a team that hadn't made the playoffs in five years -- and hadn't reached the NBA Finals in more than two decades.

"That organization was f---ed up after the [Steve] Nash years," Chandler says.

Chandler had won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, an Olympic gold medal with Team USA and a Defensive Player of the Year award in 2012, and became an All-Star for the first time in 2013.

Initially viewed as a key recruiting piece for LaMarcus Aldridge, the Suns signed Chandler right as free agency began, then brought him as a surprise guest to 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.

"A lot of rookies, they're taking in too much information," Chandler says. "Their eyes are wide open. They're moving a hundred miles an hour. With Devin, you were able to talk to him and he was able to process."

Booker asked Chandler about everything. What were the Olympics like? What were the Western Conference finals like? What was winning a championship like?

"People talk about [the losing] situation that 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 somebody like Tyson, who has accomplished everything that I want to do in this league ...

"I always leaned on him. I still do."

And what did Chandler tell him those experiences were like?

"Once you get a taste of it," Booker said, "there's nothing else that you're going to want in the world."

AFTER THE SUNS 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.

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[Indy]

Saric has two more years on his contract, so he should get another chance even if he misses all next season. Might be tough though as I assume we’ll have replaced him in the lineup. Injuries really suck.

So you are saying we will get another Contract Year Dario...