Booker, who is competing for MVP, is already the league's first quarterback

Original/Oxygen is a metro

Booker has completed a very high-quality career change in a short period of time - from a brush five years ago that even if he scored 71 points in the top ten of the history, he was collectively attacked as a brush that did not understand the rules, and the weak team that played for consecutive playoffs, who could occasionally delay the empty cut group owners, to the past two years, from making the Suns a team that has not lost a game in Disneyland, and the individual has a famous scene represented by the breaking championship big hit Clippers, to the activation milestone on the playoff debut last year. And in the Western Conference Finals, harden has become the first active quarterback to be nominated to surpass key balls and has a black history of life and death battles, and has become the only strong team in the regular season with the united leading suns this season to become a popular MVP that is more and more recognized by more and more people.

Booker has always been a points-scoring guard, so he is the fourth youngest in history to complete 11,000 points, behind James, Durant and Kobe. Such feats illustrate how lethal Booker is even in seasons that have not received much attention. This value is also valid in the playoffs, catching Up with Booker's playoff debut last season, he gave a very visual impact on the playoff debut against the defending champion Lakers at the time - 34 points, 7 rebounds and 8 assists in the playoff debut, Tianwangshan 30 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists, and the first round finale was 47 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists.

It is undeniable that Paul has both qualitatively changed Booker and is also inevitably one of the objective factors in Booker's underestimation. Paul let the predicted strategy-bad Thunder enter the playoffs with a 1-3 reversal of the Warriors' odds of 1-3 compared to the Cavaliers, first destroying the Rockets owner's unilateral assumption of "the worst contract in professional sports history", while making Booker's Suns the top two in the league for two consecutive seasons. Because of the endorsement of a more macroscopic career, public opinion will interpret the advancement of the Phoenix Sun as the masterpiece of paul, the greatest hero.

Apparently, Booker was also part of Paul's belt with the sun. The Suns' team atmosphere was terrible, and Ayton refused to renew his contract but didn't play negatively. Paul gets the sun's initial praise at this stage, but he is always on the mission of mentoring, and is very sure that Booker is the boss of the suns, and has not given up his responsibility on the basketball court, such as using the mid-range punishment of the first gear in history at key moments, even if MVP Jokic leads the team to win. When Paul contracted the sun's only praises, Booker did not rush to grab the credit, but admired Paul, even the extra work of commercial operations wanted to watch. Booker was admitted by Paul to lead the team, and he himself gave the media a lot of attention to the boss operation, such as saying that no one was more strict with Ayton than he was, and being named leader by Crowder.

Booker's spiritual attributes are also increasingly moving towards the super-giant trend. Last season, after transitioning from a no-showaway to a top-two record league in less than a year, Booker was a little excited, and his vision was limited to matching the heights of ordinary supporters. Booker's response when asked about his season goals is in line with what he should expect at this age and stage, specifically: let the Suns become the number one in the West. The same question, replaced by Paul's answer, is probably the championship. Or ask Booker this season, the answer may change more obviously.

On the other hand, Booker also made a declaration of reform significance for himself, that is, to personally deny the identity of "Kobe's successor" that has been hyped by the outside world. In January 2022, when Booker responded through a third party to the image of himself as Kobe's successor with the spirit of Mamba, he said that the only thing he was unhappy with social media was that he refused to bind him to Kobe's mamba spirit in the playoffs last year, but so far bystanders are still using him to compare with Kobe. Booker only enjoys the inspiration of the Mamba spirit and Kobe, but does not want to be Kobe's successor. This is obviously also the same behavior that Kobe Bryant once did to Jordan, Kobe Bryant threw off the poor version of Jordan hat, and Booker is reproducing it.

Booker's failure to qualify for the MVP first gear this season is indeed outrageous. In the traditional strong teams or luxury lineups, such as the Lakers, Nets, Warriors, as well as the Lone Rangers, Jazz, Nuggets, 76 and Celtics have all appeared to be unstable, the Grizzlies belong to the dark horse, the Bucks strategically abandoned the regular season, the Suns are simply the closest to the championship of the strong team. They have the longest winning streak in team history, and they have not suffered losses in direct dialogue with the imaginary enemies in the top four of the league in the same period, and they have shown competitiveness without Paul.

Booker's stats also reached the threshold of high win rate and generalized all-round average data, he averaged more than 25 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game, and led the team to win more than 80% of the game. Not counting Booker, a total of 7 players with this level of data in history are supergiants: Jordan, James, Bird, Curry, Alphabet Brother, Barkley and Harden. Among them, James and Curry are both 2 seasons to activate the mission; only Curry in 2017 is next to MVP, because that season had Westbrook, who averaged three-doubles per game in that season, and durant in the Warriors lineup who is about to almost make a three-game FMVP.

Obviously, Booker is already competing for MVP, but he is still significantly different from Jokic, Embiid and Alphabet Brother in terms of data and the way he leads the team. Jokic's three major statistics are the top of the league list per game, basically the whole season has been absent from the two or three home single core to lead the team; Embiid is the first person to play a single game with a high scoring reference value (over 30 points); alphabet brother has both attack and defense, competing for the scoring king on the offensive end, and is also the best defensive player candidate on the defensive end. Booker's identity is only the first team scoring king in the league, and it is obvious that the attribute is not strong enough. In addition, the Suns' record in Paul's absence is still at the top of the league, but in Booker's absence, the Suns continue to win.

So, if Booker or Paul wants to get MVP, they need to break the stability of the team, and that's the challenge of the sun's way of playing. Obviously, this is a paradox. The biggest reason for the sun's strength is the strength of this system, most of the players put in, under the interaction, can produce larger value. So Booker and Paul simply don't need (or can't) play the dominance of the times, which makes them rarely discussed at high-end awards. But Booker has reached the ceiling of his first stage, he can compete for MVP, he has also made the top three of the FMVP list, and in this Season of Harden's cliff-like decline and still too much reliance on free throws, he has been widely certified as the league's first quarterback. When Booker was treated badly in MVP discussions as consensus, he began to be taken seriously. In the process, Booker's weaknesses will also be activated by public opinion, and the doubts he will have to deal with if he is stronger will increase.