Steve Kerr: Devin Booker was USA’s ‘unsung MVP’ in 2024 Olympics

Steve Kerr: Devin Booker was USA’s ‘unsung MVP’ in 2024 Olympics

The USA men’s basketball squad secured their fifth-straight Gold Medal and eighth of their last nine Olympics with a 98-87 win over France Saturday.

It was another dominant Olympics, with four of their six wins coming by 20-plus points; it’s averaged a margin-of-victory of 19.0 points in all but one of their last 11 Olympic showings–the lone outlier being in 2004, one of their most disappointing performances in USA Basketball history.

The biggest topic of conversation throughout the majority of the Olympics revolved around playing time between reigning NBA champion Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid . This year’s squad was spearheaded by Kevin Durant –arguably the greatest Team USA men’s player ever– LeBron James and Stephen Curry , who was playing in his first-ever Olympics.

James might have taken home the Olympic MVP, but after earning Gold, head coach Steve Kerr wanted to shout out one player who he thought was under-appreciated during the tourney: Devin Booker .

“He was our unsung MVP,” Kerr said about Booker, according to NBA reporter Ben Golliver of the Washington Post.

“He was incredible this entire round,” Kerr said, according to David Aldridge of The Athletic. “Just what he does, play to play to play. Rock solid. Completely changed his role from the NBA to now.”

Booker, competing in his second Olympic Games, averaged 11.7 points, 2.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists on 56.8 percent shooting and 56.5 percent from 3-point range (13-23).

In his Phoenix Suns context, Booker not only led the team in usage, but has ranked in the top-16 in usage each of the last seven seasons (four in top-10). With Team USA, he didn’t mind taking a couple steps back on-ball, ranking 8th (of 12) in usage. When he was on the floor, Booker, 27, was sensational as a spot-up threat and as a cutter alongside James and Curry.

The 6-foot-6 guard completely bought in defensively, where he was sound all tournament at the point-of-attack with his assignments. The star continued to display how malleable he was in a context where he won’t have the ball in his hands more often–perhaps this relates back to his collegiate career at Kentucky, where he won the SEC’s Sixth Man of the Year award in his lone season.

It’s very cool to see Kerr shouting him out because it was more than well-deserved.

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