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Devin Booker joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only players to do this

© Matthew Hinton-USA TODAY Sports

After notching 52 points tonight against the New Orleans Pelicans, Devin Booker has now scored 50-plus points eight times. Three of these performances have come consecutively against the Pelicans. 

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Booker becomes the only player in NBA history other than Wilt Chamberlain to score 50 or more against the same opponent in three straight games. 

“Shoutout my family in the house,” Booker said to AZ Family postgame. “My high school, Moss Point in Mississippi, it’s about an hour and a half, hour and 45 away, so I have a lot of family here. They’ve been showing up and showing out since my rookie year. Over 50-100 people here, so always have to put on something special for them.”

Booker finished with a career-high eight 3-pointers to go along with nine assists in the Suns’ (44-31) 124-111 win over New Orleans (45-30). 

“He just really has a comfort zone here,” coach Frank Vogel said. “I know there’s all kinds of stats about what has and hasn’t been done, but to see a guy go for 50 three straight times against a single opponent … it just shows what kind of special player he is. I mean, it’s really unbelievable the type of performance he had tonight, but the fact that he’s done it three times in a row is just incredible.”

His last 50-point performance against New Orleans came when he had 52 in the teams’ only other meeting this season on Jan. 19 at Smoothie King Center. Phoenix won this game 123-109. Before that, he scored 58 points in a 118-114 home victory last season on Dec. 17, 2022 against the Pelicans.

This means Booker is averaging 54 points on 62% shooting the last three games against New Orleans.

 

Tonight, Booker had 24 of his points in the first quarter and now has the most quarters with 20-plus points of any NBA player since the start of the 2016-17 season.

Booker also tied a season-high with 37 points in the first half and now has a franchise-best 12 career 30-point halves.

Entering tonight, Booker was shooting 18-of-64 from 3 in 10 the last games since returning from an ankle injury.

He turned this around right away with his big first quarter, in which he hit five 3-pointers. Booker finished shooting 8-of-16 (50%) from deep and 19-of-28 (68%) from the floor.

“I’ve been in stretches like that plenty of times,” Booker said, per AZ Central’s Duane Rankin. “Usually when it counts, it’s time to make them.”

Vogel detailed more of Booker’s performance.

“He was in attack mode in every way,” Vogel said. “If there was space at the 3-point line, he was looking to rise up. And if there was an avenue to the lane, he was ducking his head and getting to the rim, getting to the free-throw line. He was doing it in all ways.”

Booker is now averaging the sixth-most points in the NBA this season at 27.4 across 61 contests. This means he needs five more to qualify for All-NBA awards, as one of these games doesn’t count because he was ejected in the first quarter against the Detroit Pistons on Feb. 14 and didn’t play the required 15 minutes for it to count.

Booker now has three 50-point games this season alone with only his season-high 62 points in a Jan. 26 loss to the Indiana Pacers topping the point totals from these two games against New Orleans.

The Suns now only have seven games left with this strong close to a five-game road trip. They win the head-to-head tiebreaker and are only one game back of the Pelicans for sixth place in the Western Conference. These two teams will meet once again in Phoenix on April 7.

Phoenix next plays the Cleveland Cavaliers (45-30) Wednesday night.

Devin Booker finally reaches new career high in 3-pointers

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Brendan Mau is a senior writer covering the Phoenix Suns and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @Brendan_Mau

 

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