Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker is the first player since NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain to score 50-plus points in three straight games against the same team.
Booker has scored 50 or more points in three consecutive games versus the New Orleans Pelicans.
Booker finished with 52 points against the Pelicans last night (4/1) while shooting 19-of-28 from the field, 8-of-16 from beyond the arc and 6-of-7 from the free-throw line.
The Suns beat the Pelicans by a final score of 124-111.
“Anytime you get named with Wilt, and it’s happened a few times in my career, but you know you did something special,” Booker said, via ESPN. “I just feel like I’m playing the same way. I mean, the crib is close. I have a lot of family in attendance. I grew up coming here. It’s the first NBA arena I went to. So there’s some history here.”
Suns forward Kevin Durant, who was on the court for Booker’s 52-point night in January against the Pelicans, said he couldn’t believe what Booker was doing.
“It was like déjà vu as it was happening,” Durant said. “You look up, he’s got 20 points in the first quarter. Then what I loved about it, everything was in the flow of the game from the start. Pin downs, catch-and-shoots, cuts to the rim, layups, going through pull-ups. That’s the sign of an otherworldly scorer when you can do it in the flow of the offense like that.”
One of the top players in the NBA, Booker is now averaging 27.4 points, 4.7 rebounds and 6.9 assists on the season for the Suns while shooting 49.6% overall, 36.8% from 3 and 88.1% from the foul line.
“If there was space at the 3-point line, he was looking to rise up,” Suns head coach Frank Vogel said. “If there was an avenue to the rim, he was ducking his head and getting to the rim and getting to the free throw line. So he was doing it in all ways.”
The Suns are 44-31 on the season. They are in seventh place in the Western Conference standings.
Phoenix is 10th in the NBA in points per game, 16th in points per game allowed and 10th in net rating.
“Our challenge now is to string together two in a row of those types of performance and then three in a row and keep it going rather than being inconsistent, which we’ve been at times this year,” Vogel said.
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