Deep Dive: Where does Devin Booker rank among perimeter-oriented players?

Hi Suns fans,

Following another series of posts comparing Luka Doncic vs Devin Booker recently, I chose to take a look at it using the set of data/stats I used last time to make comparisons between free-agents forwards.

I guess you know the drill by now. See the article above for more details about the provenance/use of the data. The weighting is the tricky part. It’s not easy to come up with something that wouldn’t be called subjective or non-consensual. But I have to start somewhere. Hopefully I get some feeback on these weights in order to make it more precise, relevant and accurate after each in-depth study.

My scope is players who have a perimeter-oriented game (backcourt) and/or playmaking duties. They can be listed as PG, SG, SF, G and sometimes even SF-PF (like Tatum or Bridges). Player X must have played at least 30 games this season and 24MPG. I ended up with 97 players that I have ranked in 3 main catégories (General, Offense, Defense).

So here’s the top-16 chart (open it in separate tab here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UdHHygOLzoie3xBR6-Jv0RlKa2Tny6M9/view?usp=sharing)

And here are the next 16 (open it in separate tab here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1expVfHsUz_ziepLL3_dCfcBCJomgDVbJ/view?usp=sharing)

What do we see ?

• By those metrics and methodology I used James Harden is an UFO, in a tier of this own, far above everybody, on offense AND defense !
• Jayson Tatum is the second most versatile perimeter-oriented player behind Harden, above everybody else.
• Devin Booker ranks 16th among all perimeter-oriented players but is arguably a top-8 offensive player (behind Damian Lillard, Beard, Chris Paul, Trae Young, Luka, Bradley Beal & Tatum). Unfortunately he also happens to be pretty bad on defense (73th / 97)
• Jrue Holiday is the best defender of the group, followed by Elfrid Payton (shocker!!), Harden, Ben Simmons, brother Justin Holiday, Eric Bledsoe, Josh Hart, Kent Bazemore, Lonzo Ball & Fred Van Vleet who round out the top-10 in that category (Tatum is 11th in addition to top-8 offense btw).
• Mikal Bridges ranks 29th overall (19th on defense) & Kelly Oubre Jr. 33rd

Conclusion :

Offensively speaking DBook has elevated himself to elite status this season, All-NBA worthy backcourt player, if not for very mediocre team record, but strictly on an individual impact & performance standpoint.

There’s still a huge gap between him and top defensive players at those perimeter-oriented spots. That’s where Book must focus going forward to go from bad to passable/slightly-below-average.

If you want to know more among lower-ranked players hit me with a comment post I will provide you with a link (image).

Eager to see your comments below