The Suns have officially signed guard Devin Booker to a contract extension that will cover five years and pay him the maximum salary, the team announced today in a press release. The club also tweeted out of a photo of Booker with the finalized contract.
“I am humbled and honored to commit to the Suns organization long term,” Booker said in a statement. “I have loved calling Phoenix home the last three seasons as this team and community are special to me. Thank you to the Suns for drafting me and believing in me. I look forward to the future and pursing a title as a Phoenix Sun.”
The Suns and Booker met earlier this week and were said to be making progress toward finalizing a new five-year max extension. The deal couldn’t be completed until after the July moratorium ended on Friday.
Booker’s new contract will go into effect starting in the 2019/20 season. Currently, based on a $109MM cap projection for that league year, a five-year deal would be worth $158MM. However, that figure could go up or down depending on where the salary cap ultimately lands. The starting salary will be worth 25% of the cap.
Booker, 21, has improved his numbers across the board during his first three seasons in the NBA, establishing new career highs in PPG (24.9), APG (4.7), RPG (4.5), 3PT% (.383), and several other categories in 2017/18.
The Suns haven’t won more than 24 games in a season since Booker debuted with the team, but the franchise appears to be trending in a positive direction. So far this offseason, the club has added No. 1 overall pick Deandre Ayton, young three-and-D wing Mikal Bridges, and veteran wing Trevor Ariza, among others, so Booker should have more help going forward.
Booker was one of 23 former first-round picks eligible for a rookie scale extension this offseason. While the Suns guard was the first one to officially sign a new deal, there are several other candidates to get one before the mid-October deadline, including Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis, Myles Turner, and Larry Nance.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
This contract is not gonna age well.
He’ll be on a different team in 3 years
A dream and vision of youth. Run down the court, fire it up, repeat, sign for $158mil, and thanks to losing, good teammates suddenly show up.
I like Booker, Jackson, Warren, Knight, Bridges, and Ayton better than the Sixers. I plan on watching them a lot on NBA League Pass next year.
What possible reason could you have to bring the sixers up for comparison? Sounds like someone is a closet fan. You are delusional if you think the suns are better than the sixers.
They easily could be in a couple years
lol the Sixers are already aging out for the NBA’s fanboys.
Well Embiid can look scary.
Too many players get max deals
Because the cap throttles spending. The top players are earning less than what they could actually get, because their union hadn’t figured out how to leverage properly.
Because you think $35 million a year is not enough?
Is 20 billion not enough for the owners?
Lol, most of the owners were rich before owning a team. That’s like saying a small business owner should pay his employees 100k a year at like a garden center just bc its popular.
Untrue. It’s not the salary cap that’s an issue it’s the salary floor. Teams spend because they have to. Who else on that team deserves to be the highest paid player on that team?
Booker deserves every cent of this contract, barring some injury he will look very cheap very soon, just like Embiid does now. I agree top players should get more money & owners less, owners don’t entertain or do anything for anyone, the players are the business, they are the money makers, should get a bigger slice of the pie.
The NBA contract says the owners get 51% of revenue sharing and players get 49%. These are some pretty smart people figuring this out. They are way over our heads.
They should have waited until next year to give him this deal. Honestly, this is only a slightly better contract than the one Wiggins got, in my opinion, and that’s only b/c Booker can shoot. He needs to get better defensively. This year, he’ll have better defense around him, so there isnt any excuses
Lmao this comment section is funny, many analysts have said Booker has a chance to be the next Kobe. In fact I believe at on point Kobe even said that. Booker will be a superstar, he’s gonna become a Harden/Kobe like player. He’s easily the best young scorer in the league, Mitchell is close but he’s only had one year
Booker = Michael Redd. Bad team, great stats. They have a chance tho, if Ayton and Bridges pan out, they have a chance to compete in the West in the next 3 years.