Devin Booker was the Ironman of the three stars on the Phoenix Suns, but that will end Saturday night.
Booker will sit out for the first time this season due to left groin tightness when the Suns host the Detroit Pistons.
Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal have each missed 10 games already this season while Booker was able to answer the ball for each of Phoenix’s first 26 games.
But he was injured just past the midway point of the third quarter in a 120-111 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Thursday night and was formally declared out Friday after missing practice.
Phoenix hasn’t yet provided a timetable for how long Booker might be sidelined.
Beal was highly bummed out by the injury to Booker.
“You’re definitely disheartened by it because you never want to see anybody hurt, definitely not the guy of his caliber,” Beal said on Friday. “But I mean, you just got to keep hooping. You got to keep going, keep pushing.”
Booker is averaging 25.1 points, 6.4 assists and 3.7 rebounds per contest. Only Durant (26.4) has a higher scoring average on the Suns. Beal is third on the team at 17.7 points per game.
The failure to have everyone healthy has been a problem for the Suns as they are just 1-9 when Durant is unavailable.
Tyus Jones ranks fourth on the team with a 12.5 scoring average and leads Phoenix in assists at 6.9. He said the team has to step up its play when one of the stars are sidelined.
“We got to do a better job of that, of creating a more general identity,” Jones said. “All three of them aren’t going to play every night, that’s just the reality of it.
“When an injury does happen, we can still hang our hat on our pillars of how we want to play and what our identity is. … We just got to do a better job of sticking to that.”
The loss to Indiana prevented the Suns from winning more than two straight games. They have done that just once when they rolled off seven in a row during an 8-1 start.
Phoenix is looking for its eighth straight victory over Detroit, following the Pistons winning the previous eight in a row in the series.
Detroit has dropped five of its past seven overall games as it begins a four-game road trip.
The Pistons will be seeking a rebound from Thursday’s 126-119 home loss to the Utah Jazz. That seven-point margin is deceiving as Detroit trailed 48-19 after one quarter.
“We definitely dug ourselves too deep into a hole,” Pistons standout Cade Cunningham said afterward. “It’s hard to come back from that.”
Cunningham scored 33 points for his third 30-point outing of the season. He has scored 20 or more points in 14 of the past 16 games.
Cunningham also had seven assists and matched his season best of four blocked shots.
But overall, Cunningham was stunned at how the fast the Pistons fell behind in the opening quarter.
“I thought we got good shots to start the game,” he said. “We didn’t hit (our shots), they hit probably every shot. It’s kind of like, we didn’t get too down on ourselves, I thought we still were playing good basketball, the ball just wasn’t bouncing our way, but then it snowballed, and we allowed them to get looks that they wanted.”
Shooting guard Jaden Ivey, whose 17.3 scoring average is second behind Cunningham (23.9), is probable after missing the previous two games due to left knee soreness. Big man Isaiah Stewart will miss his second consecutive game due to a hyperextended left knee.
