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Has there ever been a worse postseason series played while healthy during a star players prime than Trae Young's series vs. Miami. It's embarrassing how bad he has been. Poor shooting, careless turnovers, no defense. More turnovers than FG's made in this series.

Anyone who undermines the impact Pg defense can have specially in playoffs should watch this series...........yes bigs and forwards have more impact on defense than guards but ppl pretending Pg defense isnt impactful or important are delusional. Trae had maybe the worst defensive series ive ever seen and that directly affected his putrid offense with how much he was working

Don’t know if it’s as bad but Lillard vs NOP 2018 was pretty garbage.

Julius Randle against the Hawks last year is up there.

Butler against Milwaukee last year was pretty rough. So was Bam for that matter.

He had also 10 turnovers in game 2,overall it was 6 turnovers per game

2019 Irving vs Bucks is pretty close. He didn't turn the ball over quite as much.

There's a lot of merrit to the Heat's stifling defense, but Trae had an absolute stinker of a series. Especially after all the hype and his own posturing this is a meltdown of epic proportions.

The better team still won, I'm not surprised about the Hawks getting bounced.

Trae Young is already really good, but I'm not sure if he's really in his prime. He's in his 4th season and it was his 2nd post season.

Some of the names-series being listed shows people don't appreciate how bad Trae was this series. His numbers in this series were worse than Kobe's post-achillies and he's maybe the worst defender in the NBA.

I don't even think we need limit ourselves to primes here. This series is probably in the bottom 5 percentile for all the series played by stars, outside their prime included, for negative value

It was so bad to the point where I don't think it's even debatable that completely replacing all of Trae's minutes with a league average rotation guy would have likely pushed this series to 6-7 games. It's one thing to just not shoot well in a series, but the absolute turn-style defense, the horrid shot selection, and generally just pounding the air out of the ball and not being able to take advantage of any mismatches/switches while completely bogging down your team's offense?

They were quite literally hemorrhaging points whenever Trae was on the floor (-21.5 points per-100 when on, +0.5 points per-100 when off). Just an absolutely brutal showing. Trae's still young, but he can't be considered on the shortlist of best offensive players in the league after getting body-bagged like this.

Fadeaway_J wrote:Butler against Milwaukee last year was pretty rough. So was Bam for that matter.

This was what I was thinking.

2021 Butler vs. Bucks
14.5 ppg on 39.4% TS, 9.7 PER, 10.9 TOV%, -1.4 BPM, -24.1 ON, -24.4 ON-OFF, -6.5 RAPTOR

2022 Young vs. Heat
16.5 ppg on 48.8% TS, 6.4 PER, 26.2 TOV% , -7.2 BPM, -21.5 ON, -22.0 ON-OFF, -8.0 RAPTOR

I didn’t watch this series but am not surprised. This is what I expected would happen against him when a good team locks in. His defense is to terrible and he is to small. During the draft I saw a regular season player, once a well coached team can lock-in over a series I’d expect to see more of this.

SNPA wrote:I didn’t watch this series but am not surprised. This is what I expected would happen against him when a good team locks in. His defense is to terrible and he is to small. During the draft I saw a regular season player, once a well coached team can lock-in over a series I’d expect to see more of this.

A lot of people keep saying his size is an issue and while I don’t disagree we’ve seen CP3 torch playoff defenses at Trae’s size.

I think it’s just the media hyping him up too early as a star in his young career. Not that he wasn’t the best player on his team last year but it was a total team effort that helped them.

Carmelo Anthony in 2006 was awful too.

21 PPG on 33 FG%!

https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2006-nba-western-conference-first-round-nuggets-vs-clippers.html

Trae Young had a -7.8 BPM. The only star player I found with a worse BPM was Drazen Petrovic in 1993. On the surface, his numbers don't look bad. 15.6 PPG on .521 TS%. But the context makes it look dreadful

15.6 PPG, 1.8 Reb, 1.8 AST-4.4 TOV, .521 TS%, 5.6 PER, -8.8 BPM

I would say ...
1) It's impossible to say (regarding "ever") with tapes and much data missing from earlier series.
2) You would need to define star (say X percentle among starters) and build a (yearly?) eligible player list to really check.
3) You'd want to clarify is worse in relative (dropoff) or absolute terms.
4) How one accounts for opponents in a small sample is tricky (they aren't necessarily at RS average standard over such a small sample).
5) How one assesses players matters more in a small sample. Over a season there are fewer outliers among big minute/heavily discussed players and metrics somewhat converge. In small samples, which measures you trust/use matters more. As an extreme illustration of divergence (off a 9 minute sample)
Daniel Orton playoff PER: 20
DO playoff BPM: 3
DO playoff WS/48: .464.


I don't know that he'd qualify as a star (inclined to say no, especially at that point, but people mean different things, and I suppose the nickname ...) and it doesn't look to be in Young's league but I looked up Marbury since he never had a good series, '98 looks his worst box (though maybe '97 in measures where team defence is factored in)
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1998-nba-western-conference-first-round-timberwolves-vs-supersonics.html
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/marbust01.html

Kevin Duckworth was technically an All-Star '89 if nowhere near that standard
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/duckwke01.html
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1989-nba-western-conference-first-round-trail-blazers-vs-lakers.html

Owly wrote:Kevin Duckworth was technically an All-Star '89 if nowhere near that standard
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/duckwke01.html
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1989-nba-western-conference-first-round-trail-blazers-vs-lakers.html

Not to derail, but you know what the utter absurdity of Duckworth's inclusion is?

Kevin Johnson was averaging 20.4 and 12.2 that year, anchoring the 2nd-rated offense [55-win team].......and did NOT make that same Western All-Star Team.
Magic Johnson was a selection, but got injured and couldn't play; so when picking a 13th WC player to be his replacement, KJ still wasn't selected! [plays the same position and everything]
Instead they rewarded last-legs Kareem with a legacy pick.

Statlanta wrote:

SNPA wrote:I didn’t watch this series but am not surprised. This is what I expected would happen against him when a good team locks in. His defense is to terrible and he is to small. During the draft I saw a regular season player, once a well coached team can lock-in over a series I’d expect to see more of this.

A lot of people keep saying his size is an issue and while I don’t disagree we’ve seen CP3 torch playoff defenses at Trae’s size.

I think it’s just the media hyping him up too early as a star in his young career. Not that he wasn’t the best player on his team last year but it was a total team effort that helped them.

Small guys need to be mighty and/or ridiculous athletes. Trae is neither. He’s small, weak and subpar athletically. A good defensive team in a series should be able to take him out.

trex_8063 wrote:

Owly wrote:Kevin Duckworth was technically an All-Star '89 if nowhere near that standard
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/duckwke01.html
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1989-nba-western-conference-first-round-trail-blazers-vs-lakers.html

Not to derail, but you know what the utter absurdity of Duckworth's inclusion is?

Kevin Johnson was averaging 20.4 and 12.2 that year, anchoring the 2nd-rated offense [55-win team].......and did NOT make that same Western All-Star Team.
Magic Johnson was a selection, but got injured and couldn't play; so when picking a 13th WC player to be his replacement, KJ still wasn't selected! [plays the same position and everything]
Instead they rewarded last-legs Kareem with a legacy pick.

Smh I remember that. The amazing thing about that Blazers team was that they were really good defensively despite how trash Duckworth was on defense. It was shocking g that a center was that poor defensively.