1/7/2024 0 Comments Devin booker wallpaperTim Keown on the magic and mystery of LaMelo Ball Your monthly ticket to the biggest stories on the most captivating athletes, told with inside access, bold reporting and unforgettable visuals. They're on the way, and I'm going to work and get there no matter what." There was already a party, as he sees it, it's just that in the bubble "more people got invited." Tweets aside, Book knows "the extra things are going to come with team success, the playoff experiences. You could, if you weren't paying attention to the Phoenix Suns the past five years and didn't know he already has a 70-point game on his résumé, make the case that the bubble was the venue of Book's coming-out party. Thirty-one points a game on 50% shooting in the bubble and it turns out that in a league of one-name stars, many of them not as prodigious, as efficient, as consistent, as charismatic, or with as fascinating a backstory as Booker, we are just now finding out his name. "It's Book or DBook," he wrote in December, not Devin.Īnd here we are realizing how little we've known about Book, which is what happens when you've never been to the playoffs, when you're rarely involved in prime-time nationally showcased games, when your franchise has been irrelevant for 10 years. ![]() Six months later, the 24-year-old made a game-winning jumper with 1.5 seconds left on his return to the lineup after a hamstring injury, sending the Mavericks to defeat in Dallas and reinvigorating a Suns team stumbling in his absence.Įach Mamba-like moment brings it back - those weren't just words on the shoes or in the tweets: They were fuel, and they last.Īs he tells the story, Booker slowly rolls up the sleeve on his left forearm to reveal a simple script tattoo, etched in the writing once scrawled on a teenager's shoe: Be Legendary.ĪND YET, HERE he is at the start of his sixth NBA season, after averaging 25, 27 and 27 points the past three, after drawing comparisons from some in his fraternity to a young Kobe, finding it necessary nonetheless to fire off a tweet to tell people his name. Booker drained perhaps the most dramatic shot of the NBA's 2020 bubble restart, the buzzer-beater over Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, two of the league's best defenders, to beat the Clippers in August. and he said, 'Book him,' and from hearing from everybody after that night, obviously Kobe sending a tweet out was the most touching to me."įast-forward four seasons and it seems Kobe had a pretty keen sense of who he was encouraging - or anointing. "He just sent me the flexing emoji, and I remember he sent a tweet out. The big brotherly conversations would continue, like the night, March 24, 2017, when Booker became the youngest player in NBA history to score at least 60 points in a game as he put 70 on the Celtics. It's finding more and wanting more and going to get more." He told me I have the footwork, I have intangibles to be legendary. "He didn't only just write 'be legendary,' he told me what it was going to take to get there. "One shoe said, 'To the young one,' and the next one was, 'To Book, be legendary,'" Booker says, smiling at the memory. They exchanged numbers, and Kobe signed shoes for Booker. and I thought it was going to be a two-, three-minute convo, and it ended up being 15, 20 minutes postgame." ![]() ![]() "Straight to the shower, straight to the visitors locker room. Kobe asked Booker to continue the conversation off the floor. ![]() But after the game, Kobe came up to him and said, "You know what? I did the same thing when I matched up with MJ the first time." I went right to the Kobe fadeaway," Booker says. So what did the 19-year-old Suns rookie do when he found himself with the ball and matched up with his basketball idol in what would be Bryant's final game in Phoenix? Devin Booker was just coming through his first year in the NBA. In March 2016, Kobe Bryant was in the final weeks of a storied 20-season career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |