Devin Booker is currently just one of two players in the NBA who has Mexican rootsNBAE/GETTY IMAGES
The Suns have been "trying to reach out to Latino fans on both sides of the border for years," but there is "nothing like a winning team with an electrifying star player in Devin Booker who has embraced his Mexican roots to give Latinos a reason to jump on the Suns' bandwagon," according to a front-page piece by Daniel Gonzalez of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC. Suns Spanish language broadcaster Arturo Ochoa said a lot of that Latino excitement over the Suns, who are in the NBA Finals for the first time in 28 years, "has to do with the fact that Booker has Mexican blood, Mexican heritage." Ochoa added that the 24-year-old Booker is "one of only two players currently playing in the NBA with Mexican roots." Gonzalez noted Booker has an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother. There have been "relatively few Latino NBA players, let alone bona fide stars like Booker," and in recent years, he has "more publicly embraced his Latino heritage, particularly his Mexican roots." While soccer is the "most popular sport in Latin America," Latinos in the U.S. have "embraced the NFL, Major League Baseball and increasingly" the NBA. The Suns in recent years have "doubled down on efforts to reach out to Latino fans on both sides of the border." Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Dean Stoyer said that the Suns have "almost completely sold out of the team's Los Suns collection of jerseys and other merchandise" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 7/7).
