{"id":52915,"date":"2025-07-10T02:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T02:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/52915\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T02:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T02:04:10","slug":"devin-booker-reportedly-agrees-to-2-year-145-million-max-extension-with-the-suns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/52915\/","title":{"rendered":"Devin Booker reportedly agrees to 2-year, $145 million max extension with the Suns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Devin Booker has agreed to a two-year, $145 million contract extension with the Phoenix Suns, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania<\/a>, keeping Phoenix\u2019s face of the franchise under contract through 2030 as a hoped-for stabilizing agent amid a period of uncertainty in Arizona.<\/p>\n

The collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players stipulates that a contract covering a term of five or six seasons (including option years) can\u2019t be extended until the third anniversary of the signing of the contract, and that it can only be extended up to five years out from the date of the new deal\u2019s signing.<\/p>\n

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Booker has three seasons left on the four-year, $224 supermax extension<\/a> he agreed to in 2022, putting pen to paper on July 6<\/a>. In total, Booker will be paid $316 million over the next five years.<\/p>\n

Which is to say: The Suns are giving Booker as much money as they are allowed to give him, as soon as they are allowed to give it to him. They will also pay him an average annual salary higher than any player in the NFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That should come as no surprise, given how emphatic Suns owner Mat Ishbia was earlier this season about viewing Booker as the cornerstone of whatever came next in the Valley \u2014 even as rumblings about the Rockets\u2019 interest in trading for him grew louder and louder as Phoenix dropped further and further in the Western Conference standings.<\/p>\n

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“Never happen,” Ishbia said, according to ESPN\u2019s Tim MacMahon<\/a>. “It’s silly. So here’s what I’ll tell you: I have Devin Booker in the prime. In order to win an NBA championship, you got to have a superstar. You got to have a great player.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s also very much in keeping with Booker\u2019s own public statements about wanting to be one of the \u201crare breed\u201d of players who spends his entire career with one franchise \u2014 even if that franchise has rarely tasted success during his tenure with it.<\/p>\n

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“I take pride in the community in Phoenix, the people that have supported me since I was 18 when things were ugly,\u201d Booker told MacMahon<\/a>. \u201cAnd the people that are with us, we just fell short of accomplishing what we want. So I want to do it, and I want to do it here. That’s the responsibility of being a franchise player, and I wear that with honor. So it might not look the most pretty right now, but we got to get it done and I’m going to do it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Suns enter the 2025-26 NBA season feeling pretty far away from getting it done, after failing to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2020, trading away one-time-all-in-bet Kevin Durant<\/a> and rolling the dice on yet another new head coach \u2026 which, in its own way, brings us back to giving Booker as much money as possible, for as long as possible, as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

\"Mar<\/p>\n

Devin Booker inked a two-year extension with the Suns. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect \/ Reuters)<\/p>\n

As he neared the end of a profoundly disappointing Suns season, Booker sounded \u2026 well, profoundly disappointed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s been a slow bleed-out,\u201d Booker told reporters<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ve been feeling this way for the majority of the season. I think the small glimpses of good stretches that we\u2019ve played gave me hope, and probably gave everybody else hope. You never want it to be squeezing into the last spot of the play-in in the first place. \u2026 I think that\u2019s one of the steps that we skipped: Learning through the wins and the losses. Just continue to get better every day, no matter what the circumstances are. We had spots where we did it, but it has to be something that\u2019s turned on at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Attitude reflects leadership, and extending Booker firmly cements him as the central figure in establishing that culture of learning, improvement and constant engagement. Hitting him with the largest possible extension at the earliest opportunity is about as good a way as any to say, \u201cHey, sorry about the whole \u2018dismantling a team that went to the NBA Finals and going from 64 wins to under .500 in three years\u2019 thing\u201d \u2014 and a pretty strong indicator of Phoenix\u2019s commitment in rebuilding around someone who, 10 years into his career, has established himself as one of the greatest and most beloved Suns ever.<\/p>\n

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Booker, 28, is Phoenix\u2019s all-time leader<\/a> in points scored and 3-point field goals, and ranks in or near the top five in franchise history in a slew of other categories, including games, minutes and points per game. He\u2019s a four-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA selection and two-time Olympic gold medalist. He\u2019s one of the league\u2019s premier three-level scorers: a high-efficiency finisher in the paint, an elite midrange marksman, and a five-alarm threat beyond the arc, whether he\u2019s firing off the catch or pulling up behind a ball screen.<\/p>\n

The Kentucky product has also developed into a high-end, low-mistake primary playmaker, joining Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell as one of just four NBA players over the last five seasons<\/a> to use at least 30% of his team\u2019s offensive possessions, dish assists on more than a quarter of his teammates\u2019 baskets, and turn it over less than 12% of the time. Even in a down-by-his-standards 2024-25 campaign, Booker averaged 25.6 points and a career-high 7.1 assists per game on .589 true shooting \u2014 marks that put him in the company of Nikola Joki\u0107, Luka Don\u010di\u0107 and Jalen Brunson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Suns will need Booker to be every ounce that good, productive and efficient as a No. 1 option next season to have any hope of returning to the playoffs after yet another tumultuous offseason. Phoenix has fired its head coach<\/a> for the third<\/a> straight<\/a> spring, sent Durant to the Rockets for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, No. 10 overall draft pick Khaman Maluach, and five second-round picks, dealt its last two tradable first-round picks<\/a> to Charlotte for enticing but oft-injured center Mark Williams<\/a>, added a couple of promising second-round prospects in St. Joe\u2019s wing Rasheer Fleming<\/a> and Kentucky shooter Koby Brea, and reportedly remains at an impasse on The Bradley Beal Situation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Booker will have to get on the same page with new head coach Jordan Ott \u2014 whom Ishbia and new general manager Brian Gregory hired after a process in which Booker reportedly \u201chad a level of involvement.\u201d<\/a> He\u2019ll have to get reacclimated to life alongside Beal in a now-Durant-less context, find synergy with another similarly styled combo guard in Green, and develop chemistry with a new battery of pick-and-roll partners in Williams and Maluach. He\u2019ll have to rediscover his 3-point stroke while facilitating at a higher level as, in all likelihood, Phoenix\u2019s primary ball-handler and playmaker.<\/p>\n

If he can do all that, and produce at the All-NBA individual level that he played at over the previous three seasons \u2026 then maybe the Suns will have a chance at climbing back into the West\u2019s middle class, vying for the chance to escape the play-in tournament in the next couple of seasons. That\u2019s the task facing Booker; it is not an easy one. If nothing else, he\u2019ll be awfully well compensated to do it.<\/p>\n