Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker underwent surgery a couple weeks ago to repair a joint in his hand you should not try to pronounce, and his recovery timeline of six weeks means the 21-year-old will miss this year’s training camp and, potentially, the first week or two of the season.

Booker reportedly dealt with the issue last year, which should give onlookers some pause. We have no reason not to trust Phoenix’s assessment, but we also have ample reason to believe the Kentucky product will miss some time if the issue really is chronic.

The basketball intelligentsia better hope not.

Booker is one of the most polarizing players in the NBA. He averaged 24.9 points per game last season with a career-best 56.1 true shooting percentage. At age 20, he became the youngest player and just the second since 2000—Kobe Bryant being the other, of course—to score 70 points in a single game.

The counting stats are silly, and they would’ve made Booker a superstar in the pre-Moneyball era. But they accompany poor advanced metrics, some icky defense and a tanktastic win-loss record—something like the unholy trinity of basketball hipsterism. People who like Excel and overpriced Rwandan cold brews are probably a little low on Booker. And those people are increasingly the tastemakers of the NBA blogosphere. Hell, I’m writing for a website called NBA Math right now. I also asked a colleague for Synergy numbers for this article and wrote half of it in a dimly lit coffee shop with exposed brick.

But I have a penthouse condo on Booker Island. And maybe it’ll take seeing the Suns without him for the property value to rise.

Or just another year of All-Star-caliber offense.

Booker has obvious weaknesses, to be sure. The Suns hemorrhaged 111.6 points per 100 possessions with him in the game last year. And he wasn’t just a bystander. He finished in the 13th percentile in perimeter defense among guards who played 1,000 or more minutes last season, per BBall Index’s talent grades.

The Suns star is below average in virtually every facet of defense. He gets around screens okay, but he’s not some kind of slithery, long-armed pest. His closeouts happen, but some are jittery fly-bys and others are wimpy contests. He gets in decent help position, but he doesn’t do much once there.

It’s tempting to look at the quick feet and sturdy physique and wonder how Booker would fare under the tutelage of, say, Brad Stevens or Quin Snyder. Coaches can only do so much, though. With average reach, middling athleticism and a weighty offensive burden, he’s unlikely to ever be a plus defender. And even if new Phoenix coach Igor Kokoskov brings over some tactical wizardry from Utah, the 21-year-old’s bad habits will take years to break.

But let’s face it: Some players are so good on offense that their defense is more bonus than necessity. Faulting LeBron James for being absent on defense last season is the pinnacle of nitpicking. And while Booker isn’t near LeBron’s stratosphere, he’s already an offensive prodigy.

After entering the league as a shooter—writers frequently compared him to Klay Thompson—he’s become the Suns’ creator-in-chief. That’s not a natural spot for the youngster. His first-step isn’t particularly springy, and he rarely played on the ball at Kentucky. But he’s taken to the role quickly, adding new moves and passes to his arsenal each season.

He graded out in the 73rd percentile among guards with more than 1,000 minutes played last season in BBall Index’s playmaking category. And his 9.6 potential assists per game sandwiched him between former teammates Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic.  

But he’s not a point guard, and Suns brass shouldn’t treat him like one. His 13.9 percent turnover rate isn’t special. He doesn’t consistently throw the crosscourt rockets or conniving pocket passes we expect from true playmakers. His best passes are usually flow-of-the-offense dimes to cutters and open shooters—the kinds of plays that come when freed from every-down pick-and-roll duty:

Booker is comfortable without the ball. He’s an ace shooter who actively relocates along the arc to create passing lanes. But even when he dribbles, he dribbles to score. After three years, he’s become more Gordon Hayward than Klay Thompson.

The Michigan native is built, and he uses his strength and body control to nudge defenders off balance and create angles to shoot:

If he gets his shoulder past his defender coming around a dribble hand-off or a pick, his crafty change-of-pace can be devastating:

That combination of strength, patience and ball-handling skill is almost unprecedented for a player so young. And while he could stand to finish better around the rim—his 61.1 percent within three feet is solid, but 35.1 percent in floater range is yucky—he baits big men into awkward positions and draws a respectable 6.1 free-throw attempts each game.  

Booker could easily jack up half a dozen mid-rangers each night with his taut work around screens. But he nearly halved his long twos last season. Those attempts have relocated closer to the rim or outside the arc, where that Thompson-esque stroke really shines.

He sank an excellent 36 percent of his pull-up threes in 2017-18 on 3.7 attempts per game, up from 32.8 percent on 1.7 attempts the year before. Combined with an overall boost to his three-point percentage, Booker’s more modern shot profile lifted him above the 50 percent threshold for effective field-goal percentage. Those are solid efficiency numbers, and they come at an extremely high volume in a brutal ecosystem for success. Booker has been thrust into a leading role in an offensive “system” in which he’s had to improvise more than Amy Poehler.

The advanced catch-all numbers like RPM, PIPM and our own TPA metric make Booker seem a rather ordinary player. But we’ll never be able to separate a player’s numbers from organizational chaos, poor coaching and the dumb, but correctable, laziness that bad developmental environments often breed.

Booker has had to teach himself an upper-level college course with an outdated, coffee-stained textbook and no professor. And he’s passing with a solid B. Only the most straight-edge parents would fault him for that.

That B should become an A+ soon. Moreyball imports Ryan Anderson and Trevor Ariza will stretch defenses, giving the fourth-year guard more room to operate this year. And with Kokoskov, he may have the first coherent offense of his career.  

That’s a scary thought. Booker has already learned how to compensate for his average athleticism and length. His scoring efficiency and volume have grown on a linear path. He brings the one skill—shot creation—that will never go out of style. He’s also, like, really fun to watch.

But if you let the all-in-one stats overrule the tape, or evaluate the massive new contract as if he’s a finished product, he’s easy to paint as an empty-calories scorer who doesn’t defend. And that’s an archetype the NBA world has rightfully turned against.

Booker’s young career was always going to be a proxy war between NBA intellectuals and so-called casual fans. Maybe this is the year we finally put our $6 cappuccinos down and wave the white flag.