Collin Gillespie, Suns Push Back On Criticism Of Devin Booker’s Playmaking

The 116° weather isn’t the only thing hot in Phoenix right now. After saying on Player’s Choice that Phoenix Suns All-Star Devin Booker’s play doesn’t impact the game enough to take a team “all the way” and that he is not a “force multiplier,” Suns Valley Podcast co-host Gabe Guerrero got the attention of a key Suns player and potentially the team’s social media staff. The clip has more than 300,000 views on X and has drawn the attention of a litany of Suns fans.

During the podcast, Guerrero said there are three phases of basketball: scoring, playmaking, and defense. He believes Booker affects scoring very strongly, but doesn’t have what it takes to help a team win a title.

Less than a day after the post, Suns guard Collin Gillespie, who rarely responds to critics online, reposted the video on X with a concise yet firm reaction in support of Booker.

Shortly after Gillespie’s response, the Suns’ social media team appeared to get involved, posting a slew of content about his playmaking and how his statistics compare to those of the rest of the NBA. While it’s not certain that they posted the videos and stats in response to Guerrero’s comments, all signs appear that they did based on the wording they used in the posts.

The Suns’ YouTube channel posted an eight-minute video of Booker’s “Gravity Assists,” as the video thumbnail calls them. The gravity that a player can generate on the court is synonymous with how people view playmaking.

In response to Gillespie’s and the Suns’ social media posts, Guerrero claims that he was talking about Booker’s game in the context of him playing point guard. However, the words “point” and “guard” are not used throughout the entire segment about Booker’s ability to lead a team, except when another person on the podcast said “point,” but it wasn’t in reference to the term “point guard.”

In the dog days of the offseason, takes like Guerrero’s garner more attention, and that’s exactly what happened.