How tall is Devin Booker?

Devin Booker's height: 6′5″ officially, 6′6″ in many references

Devin Booker's height comes with a small but real discrepancy, and it is worth explaining because the two figures are both widely used. NBA.com currently lists him at 6′5″ (196 cm) and 206 pounds (93 kg). This site uses that listing as the value shown at the top of this page. Many other references, including Wikidata, give 198 cm (6′6″).

Both numbers trace back to legitimate measurements. At the 2015 NBA draft combine, Booker measured 6′5¾″ in shoes, with a 6′8¼″ wingspan, an 8′6½″ standing reach and a weight of 206 pounds, according to theScore's scouting report. Reports from the combine put his barefoot height at about 6′4½″. Under the league's old conventions, which used in-shoe heights and rounded generously, 6′6″ was the natural listing for a player who measured 6′5¾″ in sneakers.

That changed in 2019, when the NBA told teams to submit exact, physician-certified heights taken with shoes off, as CBS Sports reported at the time. Under that rule a player who is about 6′4½″ to 6′5″ barefoot gets listed at 6′5″, which is what NBA.com shows today. In other words, 198 cm is roughly Booker's on-court height in basketball shoes, and 196 cm is closer to his certified barefoot height. This site follows the official 196 cm listing and notes the 198 cm figure here.

Ideal size for a shooting guard

Booker is close to the textbook height for an NBA shooting guard. A wing at 6′5″ to 6′6″ is tall enough to shoot over most point guards and smaller defenders, but light and quick enough to come off screens and handle the ball. His wingspan, about 3½ inches longer than his in-shoe height, is solid rather than exceptional. His combine report noted the best lane agility and shuttle run scores at the 2015 event, which tells you that his game rests more on footwork and quickness than on length.

That combination explains the way he scores. Booker is one of the league's best mid-range shooters, often rising into a pull-up jumper from the elbow or baseline after a hesitation dribble. At 6′5″ or 6′6″, he can see over a smaller defender and release cleanly, and against taller defenders he relies on footwork and a high release point to create space. His size also lets him post up smaller guards, a skill he added as he matured.

Booker became the youngest player to score more than 60 points in a game when he scored 70 against the Boston Celtics in March 2017 at age 20, still a Suns franchise record. At 22 he became the youngest player with back-to-back 50-point games. On February 3, 2025, he passed Hall of Famer Walter Davis to become the Suns' all-time leading scorer, as NBA.com reported, with a three-pointer in an overtime game in Portland.

Booker next to teammates, mentors and rivals

The table compares Booker with notable teammates and peers using this site's figures.

The Chris Paul partnership was Booker's most successful. With Paul at point guard, the Suns reached the 2021 NBA Finals and won a franchise-record 64 games in 2021–22, when Booker made the All-NBA first team. Booker had about 13 cm on Paul, which made the backcourt a classic pairing: a 6-foot organizer and a 6′6″ scorer who could shoot over the top.

The Kevin Durant years paired Booker with a player about 15 cm taller who could also play on the wing, which shifted Booker toward a ball-handling role. Kobe Bryant is the comparison Booker's fans make most often. Kobe's 198 cm listing is about 2 cm above Booker's current one (and predates the shoes-off rule), and their games, built around footwork, mid-range shooting and fadeaways, are similar in style.

Where Booker fits among great shooting guards

Shooting guard is the position where height has been most stable across NBA history. The defining players at the position have clustered within a few centimeters of 6′6″, and Booker is right in the middle of that cluster. The figures below are this site's.

The table shows why a "6′6″ shooting guard" is almost a template. Jordan, Kobe and Carter share the same 198 cm figure in the site's data, Booker and Thompson share 195.6 cm, and the range from Wade to McGrady spans only about 10 cm. What separates these players is not size but skill, athleticism and style: Wade and Edwards as powerful downhill attackers, Klay Thompson as a catch-and-shoot specialist, McGrady as an unusually tall creator, and Booker as a mid-range shot-maker in the Kobe mold.

The 2021 Finals and the size question

The 2021 NBA Finals, which Phoenix lost to Milwaukee in six games, are a good example of how height shapes matchups for a guard like Booker. The Bucks' best player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, is listed on this site at 211 cm, about 15 cm taller than Booker, and their perimeter defender Jrue Holiday at 193 cm. Booker scored heavily in the series, including back-to-back 40-point games, largely by using his size advantage over smaller defenders and his footwork to create space against longer ones. That is the profile of a shooting guard at the ideal height: big enough to punish guards, skilled enough to score against wings.

Kentucky and the platoon system

Booker spent one season at Kentucky, in 2014–15, on a team stacked with future NBA players. He came off the bench and won SEC Sixth Man of the Year, playing behind and alongside a frontcourt that included Karl-Anthony Towns, roughly 15 cm taller in the site's data. On that roster Booker was a specialist shooter, and theScore's scouting report questioned his ball-handling and willingness to drive. Phoenix took him 13th overall, and he has spent his entire NBA career with the Suns since.

The pre-draft concerns are a useful reminder of how little height alone predicts. Booker's size was never in question; what scouts doubted were his handle and creativity. Those developed rapidly, which is why a player projected as a spot-up shooter became a franchise's all-time leading scorer.

Family heights and background

Booker's father, Melvin Booker, was a point guard at Missouri, where he was the 1994 Big Eight Player of the Year, and he later played briefly in the NBA and for years overseas. Wikipedia and NBA.com list Melvin at 6′2″ (188 cm); a few other databases give 6′1″. Either way, Devin is roughly 8 to 10 cm taller than his father, depending on which of his own figures you use.

His mother, Veronica Gutiérrez, is of Mexican descent and comes from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Devin was born on October 30, 1996, and raised. He moved to Mississippi as a teenager to live with his father, who was an assistant coach at Moss Point High School, where Devin became the school's all-time leading scorer. While visiting his father in Milan, he played one-on-one at age 12 with Danilo Gallinari, then a teammate of Melvin's at Olimpia Milano.

His mother's height is not reliably documented, so we do not state it.

Compared with average men in the US and Mexico

Booker's parents give him two natural national comparisons. Using the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's estimates for men born in 1996, the year Booker was born:

Booker is roughly 19 to 21 cm (7½ to 8 inches) taller than the average American man, well beyond the 99th percentile of the national distribution. Against Mexican men of the same cohort, the difference is close to 30 cm, almost a foot. Mexico's average has risen sharply over the past century: NCD-RisC estimates men born in 1896 averaged about 156.7 cm, so the 1996 figure is more than 12 cm higher, one of the larger gains in the Americas.

Weight and build

Booker's weight has been remarkably steady. He weighed 206 pounds (93 kg) at the 2015 combine, where theScore's report also recorded a body-fat figure of 8.3 percent, and NBA.com still lists him at 206 pounds more than a decade later. At the 196 cm listing that corresponds to a body mass index of about 24.3; at the older 198 cm figure, about 23.8. Both are typical of a lean, athletic wing.

The consistency matters for his style. Booker is not a bruising driver who needs extra mass to absorb contact at the rim; his scoring comes from footwork, balance and shooting touch, which favor a frame that stays light and quick. Compared with teammates on this site, he is much lighter than a big man like DeAndre Ayton and noticeably heavier than Chris Paul, whose listed 175 pounds reflect a much smaller frame. For a shooting guard who plays heavy minutes and is constantly coming off screens, that middle ground is close to ideal.

It is also a useful reminder that weight listings were dropped from the league's 2019 certification policy because weight fluctuates during a season. The figure on NBA.com is a reference value rather than a measured number taken on a specific date.

The Olympic gold medals

Booker has won Olympic gold twice with the United States, at the Tokyo Games held in 2021 and at Paris 2024. On both teams he was a guard playing next to some of the tallest wings in basketball, and his role was to space the floor and defend opposing guards. In international play, where the court and three-point line are slightly different and physical perimeter defense is common, a 6′5″ guard with strong footwork is especially valuable because he can guard both guard positions.

Seeing Booker's height side by side

To compare Devin Booker with Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul or yourself, the main height comparison tool places figures at true scale, and the height difference calculator gives exact gaps in centimeters and inches. Because Booker has two common heights in circulation, it can be instructive to compare both his 196 cm and 198 cm figures against the same partner and see how much an inch changes the picture. Try him next to Klay Thompson, for example: at 198 cm Booker looks slightly taller, while at 196 cm the two are effectively level, which is closer to how they appeared when matched up on court.