Devon Booker, a five-time All Star guard for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, has visited James Turrell’s fabled Roden Crater three times—and even struck up something of a friendship with an artist who called him an “amazing person … taking it to another level, and that’s what all artists try to do.”
As reported in a lengthy profile in The Athletic, the sports section of the New York Times, Booker first traveled to Roden Crater in 2020, when he was first rapt by an artwork in a dormant volcano that Turrell has been toiling away at for more than 50 years. Booker has also been talking about an imminent visit with teammate Steph Curry (“who recently purchased a piece by Turrell”), and even designed a basketball shoe for Nike that Turrell took a liking to.
“My hair is sticking up on my arm just remembering every time I’ve been there,” Booker told The Athletic about Roden Crater. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you were going to a different dimension, but it’s like a portal that you’re walking toward and no matter how close you get—I want to say heaven’s on the other side—but it feels like you’re going somewhere.”
Turrell is a fan of basketball and, of course, art that takes a certain kind of investment to appreciate in full. “These are things that take time,” he told The Athletic. “It’s shorter than a basketball game, but it’s longer than a sermon.” Of meeting Booker, Turrell said, “It was quite a thrill. These are people that are special and have been special to basketball, to Arizona and the community in Phoenix. He’s quite an amazing person.”
Booker has developed a reputation as a man of taste, with a wide variety of interests. “He wants to be Devin. He doesn’t want to be nobody else,” Ryan Dunn, a teammate, said. “From the way that he dresses to his house to his (art) collection, it’s something that’s unique and one of one. Devin’s one of the guys where he likes what he likes, and he doesn’t need nobody else to tell him what to like.”
Booker, for his part, said Roden Crater and other art of its kind can be helpful in gaining perspective, on and off the court. “It just makes you super present,” he said. “Not many times you get to be where your two feet are at and not think about anything else that’s going on in the world.”
