He entered the league as the 13th pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, and by 2020, he was putting up 26.4 points, 6.3 assists, and 4.2 rebounds a game on 49.6 percent shooting — yet his name was nowhere on the All-Star reserves list. Devin Booker was seen as one of the biggest snubs that year, until an injury replacement spot opened and gave him the chance to prove he belonged. He’s been doing exactly that ever since, all while staying loyal to the same team for a decade.

Devin Booker is locking in with Phoenix for the long haul. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, he’s agreed to a two-year, $145 million contract extension that keeps the Suns’ franchise cornerstone under contract through 2030—a steadying presence in what’s been an uncertain time for Arizona basketball. Booker still has three seasons left on the four-year, $224 million supermax he signed back in July 2022, so when you add it all up, he’s set to make $316 million over the next five years.

So when the interviewer brought Damian Lillard — the very player whose 2020 injury opened the door for Booker’s first All-Star appearance — back to that moment in Phoenix, it was a full-circle question. They wanted to know if, even then, Dame could see Booker growing into the star he’s become today.

Damian said, “I mean. I always thought he was a special talent, but I think when you make it to the NBA, you know everybody is — you look around. You can look at each guy and say that’s a special talent. And then when you make it and you start making money and an organization gives you the keys as they say, that’s when you have a decision to make like, do I want to do the work? Do I want to be the kind of person that can take this criticism and take this pressure and have to perform even when I don’t want to and continue to work and deal with the losses that you take and all of the things that come with it?”

He went on, “you got to grow through that and you got to be able to produce and everybody’s not able to do that, even the most talented ones. And for him to be able to kind of become what he’s become, I can’t say I’m surprised by it, but you just never know. I thought he was capable of it and now it’s great to see that he’s done that.”

Booker has carried the weight of being the Suns’ franchise star for nearly a decade—taking them to the 2021 NBA Finals, becoming their all-time leading scorer, and weathering a 36-win season in 2024-25. Phoenix made their faith clear with the contract extension—the highest annual salary extension in NBA history at $72.5 million per year, edging Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s $71.25 million—though Booker might not be the one in charge of the ball. Locked in through 2029-30, he’s now earning more per year than any NFL player. Owner Mat Ishbia shut down trade rumors to Houston, calling the idea “silly” and saying, “In order to win an NBA championship, you got to have a superstar. You got to have a great player.”

The stats back him up. Booker is one of only four players in the last five seasons — alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Damian Lillard, and Donovan Mitchell — to use 30% of his team’s possessions, assist on over a quarter of teammates’ baskets, and keep turnovers under 12%. Even in a “down” year, he averaged 25.6 points and a career-high 7.1 assists on .589 true shooting, numbers that put him in the same conversation as Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, and Jalen Brunson.

This massive payday for both Lillard and Booker is yet another reminder of the loyalty each has shown to their respective franchises.

Damian Lillard and Devin Booker: A shared definition of loyalty

The talk eventually turned to loyalty—how Dame showed it in Portland and how Booker is showing it now in Phoenix. Damian put it simply: “When I think of loyalty, I think of being true to who you are and not as much as being loyal to a specific thing or organization. It’s who you are, what you representing, how you see things, and I think he represents that, you know. I think he’s standing on his square about, you know what he wants to know, not about what everybody else is doing, what he thinks is the right thing, you know, to the world or to what they saying on TV like he’s standing on what he wants to do and you know who he is. And I think that’s the most important thing.”

It’s a mindset that’s easy to see in the careers of both players. Booker has 16,452 points in 10 NBA seasons, all with the Suns, and Lillard racked up 19,376 points in 11 seasons with the Blazers before a three-team trade sent him to Milwaukee in 2023. He spent two seasons alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo chasing a championship but fell short, though he’d already cemented his place in Portland’s history as a nine-time All-Star and member of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team. Now back in Portland on a three-year, $42 million deal with a player option and no-trade clause, though Dame is sidelined for the 2025-26 season after tearing his left Achilles in last year’s playoffs.

Booker, meanwhile, has never shied away from saying he wants to be a “rare breed” who spends his entire career with one team, even if that team hasn’t had much success. “I take pride in the community in Phoenix, the people that have supported me since I was 18 when things were ugly,”he told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “And the people that are with us, we just fell short of accomplishing what we want. So I want to do it, and I want to do it here. That’s the responsibility of being a franchise player, and I wear that with honor. So it might not look the most pretty right now, but we got to get it done and I’m going to do it.”