The Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker recently did a couple of interviews with media members to talk about Call of Duty’s newest game type, Warzone.

But in the interviews, he shed some light into the state of the Phoenix Suns, the progress the team has made in changing its reputation around the NBA and the perception of the organization.

Booker told Dime Magazine’s Robby Kalland that the Suns were changing the team’s culture and the perception people had about the team.

“Yeah that was Monty’s biggest thing coming into the season,” Booker said. “When we made the hire and the addition of coach Monty, we had many conversations and his first step he said is we need to change the perception of this team and how people view us. And if that’s having to get a little nasty, play tougher, more physical, but people are going to know when they play against up some talented, hard working guys. I think we showed a lot of spots of that, especially towards the beginning of the season, but we dealt with some injuries. I think we were at our best when we had our full roster, and recovering when two or three guys would go down was tough for us this year. But we definitely showed we’re not going to be a walkover team, and I think that’s the first step in recreating a franchise or a culture is gaining respect from around the league.”

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Booker shared some similar thoughts with The Big Lead’s Liam McKeone.

He said that it had been a fun season changing what people thought about the Phoenix Suns.

When asked about which part of his game he felt he had improved the most in the past season, Booker replied: “I’d say many aspects, but the one that stuck out the most was efficiency levels. Shooting the ball at an efficient rate. I credit the system Coach Monty [Williams] put in and the players that helped me out a lot this year. Having a pass-first, true leader, playoff-experienced point guard in Ricky Rubio helped out a lot. The way Kelly Oubre played until his injury was, I’d say, the best year of his career so far. Deandre Ayton got better. It’s been a really fun season trying to change that reputation that the Suns have.”

The Suns were 26-39 when the NBA season was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

They already had their most wins in a season since 2014-15, when they went 39-43.

Phoenix only won 23 games in 2015-16, 24 games in 2016-17, 221 games in 2017-18 and 19 games in 2018-19.

Booker, the longest tenured player on the Suns, has been with the team since the 2015-16 season, so this is the most wins Phoenix has had in a season with him on the roster.

Booker was averaging 26.1 points per game, 6.6 assists per game and 4.2 rebounds per game when the season was suspended.

He made his first NBA All-Star team earlier in the season.

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Booker told Dime Magazine that he hopes to be seen as a winner in the NBA.

“I’d say just efficiency. You know, playing within the system,” he said. “Trying to find the fine balance between being aggressive and at the same time playmaking for my teammates. It’s a lot. My goal is for my reputation to be a winner, so it’s been a process for me to do for five years now. But I’m enjoying it and having fun with it and getting better every day. So, I felt like that All-Star is obviously a dream of any hooper growing up. It’s first to make the NBA, and then once you’re in the NBA, it’s to be an NBA All-Star. I mean, growing up and watching nearly every NBA All-Star game and then being in it is a crazy feeling.”

“Yeah, I always wanted to pride myself on playing the game the right way. Not having any type of label — not say role — but just do a little of everything. I think the game has transformed to positionless basketball, you see a lot of smaller lineups, so I think everyone is trying to learn how to play the game in every aspect and not get caught being known as one thing. So I took pride in that a lot of my life, and just put extreme work in. And then with Monty coming in and implementing this system with the players we have has also helped my game develop tremendously. Playing with Ricky Rubio, this year being my first full year with Kelly Oubre, Dario Saric, Aron Baynes, guys who have playoff experience. You can definitely feel it this year, and I definitely felt my game elevate because of the people around me.”