He is not the most dazzling star in the firmament.

He glows warm. He doesn’t blaze like the supernova, LeBron James.

But he is our star and our ambassador at the 2024 Olympic Games, and those games have become a showcase for his particular skills — those quiet qualities of patience, selflessness and wisdom way beyond his years.

In a U.S. basketball galaxy bursting with superstars, Devin Booker burns steady and bright, performing at such a consistently high level in high-pressure Olympic games that he stays in the games when more flashy stars just sit.

Booker is neither the most talented, nor the most athletic of the players on that U.S. men’s team, but he has become perhaps its most important role player, doing what’s needed whenever it’s needed — screening, distributing the ball, setting the tempo, locking down on defense.

In Thursday’s stunning comeback against a great Serbian team, Booker was “the unsung hero,” CBS Sports columnist Zachary Pereles wrote. Serbia had led all game, but in the fourth quarter, Booker took Serbia’s point guard out of his game and with it the Serbian offense.

“The Serbian attack ground to a halt and had to settle for several contested, late-clock jumpers,” Pereles wrote. “Booker embraced doing the dirty work and making the most of limited offensive opportunities — exactly what the team needed.”

“Booker has quietly become one of the most important players for the U.S.,” USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt wrote.

One way to understand this is statistics.

In the plus-minus (PM) stat that measures how well a team performs with a given player on the court, Booker has the highest PM on his team after 10 games at 112. Trailing him are Steph Curry ( 82) and LeBron James ( 77).

But a better way to see this is to look at the U.S. Men’s coaching staff. They are a Who’s Who of the greatest basketball minds on the planet — Steve Kerr (Golden State Warriors), Tyronn Lue (Los Angeles Clippers), Erik Spoelstra (Miami Heat) and Mark Few (Gonzaga University).

These are the men looking at a U.S. roster filled with future hall of famers and deciding Devin Booker belongs in every game in place of a half-dozen superstars who........

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