Let's say one day for some reason -- perhaps a lost bet, or a court order -- you are commanded to postulate the single name of my least-liked, lowest-rostered, points-league fantasy superstar.
You read over every column I've written since 2008. Aggregate every statement on my least-desired fantasy traits: volume-inflated scoring, empty points box scores, mediocre true shooting percentage, over-reliance on long 2-pointers, streaky shooting, too many closely contested field goal attempts... and barely-there blocks+steals.
You pull some favors and gain access to a team of programmers and one of those HAL-like mainframe supercomputers. (The kind they use at the Pentagon and Sterling-Draper-Cooper-Pryce.) The programmers feed it keycards containing your data on all my negative sentiments.
They type "RUN." You all go to lunch. And when you return, you see your supercomputer is printing out the name... the player most closely linked to every fantasy trait I disdain.
And I won't be able to argue with your team, their outdated supercomputer, or your printout. Your postulation will vibe "affirmative." Booker's closely wedded to nearly all of those listed negative traits. Securing Booker also mandates a high draft capital investment into my least-valued position: shooting guard.
But then let's say as final confirmation, just to check every box, you order your team to audit all of my drafts going back to 2018, then re-program their mainframe to generate the name of my most-drafted second-round player.
Conscience will force me to intervene in a hushed stage whisper: "you and your MIT pals don't need the high-tech bells and whistles for this name, friend... because I already know the answer. I know... because his name haunts me like no other."
I snatch that lunchtime printout from your hand. I pull out a Sharpie... a red Sharpie I save for moments of high fantasy drama. I slash a fevered circle around Devin Booker's name. I angle the paper up under the fluorescent light to ensure the dramatic music crescendos with maximum impact. "It's Booker... it's always Booker."
I call this "The Devin Booker Paradox." In my corner of Fantasyland? Booker is Keyser Soze.
Booker is one of those players often affixed with the old-school moniker of "shotmaker." Look, I live and breathe old school. I will admit to registering a small nostalgic smile at the mention of the word. But in my efficiency-fueled fantasy brain, "shotmaker" equates with "too many long 2-pointers, too many contested long 2-pointers, too many one-on-one possessions, not enough defensive energy, and underwhelming PERs."
The only "shotmaker" I feel tends to make the term a positive: Kevin Durant. He is the one high-volume shotmaker I trust to attempt an annual boatload difficult long 2s while maintaining a high TS%.
If you ever want to get lost in the rabbit hole of quantifying shotmakers, head to one of my favorite sites, Basketball Index. There, you can generate leaderboards and/or graphs that employ the stats that best reflect shotmaking acumen (as a matter of fact "shotmaking acumen" may even be one of their available variables).
If you look at another one of my favorite sites, Cleaning the Glass, you will see Booker is annually in the 90th percentile or higher of players who live to take contested, long 2-pointers. To be fair, Booker rates equally high in making these shots. This is why I find Booker to be oddly reliable: across the course of a season, you can count on him taking but also making a disproportionately high amount of midrange and long-range 2s.
All graphs point to one elite shotmaker: Durant. Booker is on the second tier alongside Luka Doncic. Both Booker and Doncic mirror a lot of Durant's shotmaking portfolio... they just can't match his efficency (yet.)
So why do all second rounds lead to Booker? Why do I automatically jump into a salary cap bidding war for Booker's services every time his price looks likely to land in the $23-$30 range?
This really used to bother me. So I spent some time figuring out the answer. I went back and looked at some old drafts. Gamed out some previous scenarios. And I reduced The Booker Paradox to this.
I am ancient. And so I prefer roto formats to points and DFS formats.
During draft season, I require little mental hacks to switch my wizened fantasy brain into points draft mode.
I know Booker is more valuable in points leagues than roto leagues. (This season to date, in per-game value, I'd put Booker right around 10th overall in points and around 20th in roto.)
Booker is perennially under-drafted in points drafts. He's a top-10 points player that often slides into the late second round. (This season, Booker's ADP is 16, and his average salary cap price is $27.30.) Going back to 2018, you will see Booker being under-drafted by five, seven, up to 10 draft slots. I can't explain why. Maybe because he slid to the 13th pick in his draft. Maybe because he plays on a team on Pacific Time. Maybe because of the negative publicity still surrounding his 70-point game earlier in his career. Maybe because fans outside of Phoenix just don't seem to dig the Suns.
For a player known as a streaky shooter, when you aggregate his production by season Booker proves a remarkably consistent producer. (You have to strike Booker's underwhelming 2020 Chris-Paul-Adjustment season.) And his streaky shooting is further mitigated by the points league format, which flattens production across all categories into a single game score.
Booker tends to miss around the same number of games every season. He's known for being brittle. He's a sure bet to miss 10-12 games a year. But the same time, Booker plays through more injuries than we probably realize... such as the groin issue he's playing through at present.
Booker is subtly adding more efficiency to his game every season (again, outside of 2020.) Right now, Booker is operating his best rate of offensive efficiency ever.
When I take Booker, I don't have to worry about shooting guard again for several rounds. And I am considerably more effective/less grumpy when I don't have to mine for production at the two in the middle rounds of a draft.
But in the end, I roster Booker for one big reason: he constantly serves as a reminder that times change. He forces me to look at the player pool from a different perspective.
Because no matter how much I might whine, Booker simply overperforms his ADP to a greater extent than most other second-rounders. And getting an extra half-round of production that high in a draft is the stuff fantasy championships are made of.