Assessing Expectations for Trae in Year 2

[EazyRoc]

Watch on YouTube

Is he an All Star ?!? Man please. Dude is arguably the best point guard in the East.

[Jamaaliver]

Is he an All Star ?!? Man please. Dude is arguably the best point guard in the East.

Agreed, but if he isn't voted a starter by the fans...I could see coaches opting to select veteran Guards leading playoff teams with more modest numbers.

Jimmy Butler, Malcolm Brogdon, Spencer Dinwiddie, Kemba, Ben Simmons. Coaches always lean towards rewarding vets having career years on playoff teams.

Think Teague in 2015 and Millsap in 2016, 2017. They didn't have elite numbers, but they were rewarded anyway.

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

An excerpt from The Athletic

Q. Young struggled for the first half of last season before going on an absolute tear in the second half. The Hawks needed him to play at an All-Star level this season to have a chance at the playoffs, and he has, but obviously losing Collins for 25 games and Huerter due to injury has paused those playoff hopes. Young doesn’t have much help around him right now and is constantly double-teamed, but he is still producing numbers. He’s clearly taken another leap forward in his growth. What do you attribute that to?

A. So, there are a few things going on here. First, Young has certainly improved to a degree. It’s too early to make pronouncements about what he’s going to shoot from 3, percentage-wise, but last year’s 32.4 percent was lower than what we can probably expect going forward. To a large degree, his accuracy from deep will be determined by shot selection. He has the ability to take and make very difficult 3s, but those aren’t shots to be desired. While there is a tremendous amount of natural variance involved in such small samples, I don’t think it’s an accident he shot 50.0 percent on 3s prior to Collins’ suspension but has made a still respectable but average-ish 36.4 percent since. Any number of splits can be used to illustrate the increased difficulty of his attempts, but a quick and easy one to look at is Young’s volume of pull-up 3s. Prior to Collins’ injury, they represented 26.9 percent of his shot attempts, since 37.2 percent, with his accuracy dropping to 33.9 percent on pull-up 3s.

That said, Young’s ability to carry the fifth-highest usage in the league, with above-league-average efficiency is extremely encouraging. And he isn’t putting up “empty calorie” stats, at least not completely, as the Hawks offense is scoring a decent 109.0 points per 100 possessions with Young in the game but cratering to an abysmal 90.1 with him off the floor.

However, it has to be noted that the Atlanta roster and system is almost custom-made to maximize Young’s opportunity. He has the ball in his hands an estimated 49.0 percent of the time he is in the game and the Hawks have the ball, second only to “He Who Must Not Be Named in Relation to Trae Young” down in Dallas. Young is fourth in the NBA in “Total Usage,” a stat of my creation accounting for a player’s scoring and playmaking contributions. When Young is on the floor, 53.6 percent of Hawks’ offensive chances directly involve him. This burden contributes to Young’s extremely high turnover rate, with him coughing the ball up on 5.9 percent of Atlanta’s offensive chances with him on the floor. This is the highest in the league this season and the second-highest since 2013-14, when this stat was first calculable.

And, defense. Just looking at raw efficiencies, the Hawks have been a massive 16.0 points per 100 possessions better with Young off the floor. According to some advanced measures, he has been the most damaging defensive player in the league this season:

Read on Twitter

...his physical limitations probably preclude him from ever being a plus defender, but going from “among the worst in the league” to “merely bad” is a huge step forward.

[Jamaaliver]

The Top 25 Players of the First 25ish Games

16. Trae Young, Hawks

Highest rank: 7
Lowest rank: NR
28.4 points, 8.4 assists, 4.1 rebounds, 1.2 steals, 54.3 eFG%, -7.7 net rating

Kevin O’Connor: Young is a pick-and-roll prodigy. As a rookie, he established himself as one of the game’s best playmakers by conning opponents with his tight handle and using the separation to throw bull’s-eye passes. Now as a sophomore, Young is showing his high-powered scoring upside. Of Young’s 28.4 points per game, 14.5 come as the ball handler in the pick-and-roll, according to Synergy Sports. He’s scoring with excellent efficiency at high volume, in part because of one move that he’s mastered: the right-to-left crossover.

Spoiler:

Young rejects screens by crossing the ball over to his left more than anyone in the NBA. In total, he’s dribbled away from the pick 73 times this season, per Synergy; he did so 96 times in 81 games last season. The closest player to that total this season is Lou Williams, with 55. It’s a new trick in Young’s book that’s helped make him one of the game’s best point guards at just 21 years old. You can bet he’ll keep adding more and more in the years to come.

The Ringer

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[Radioblacktive1]

League Rule: You are allowed to be as ignorant as you want, as long as you are talking about the Atlanta Hawks.

Read on Twitter

?s=21

[Jamaaliver]

^^^I gotta be honest, I'm starting to agree with Barkley and many of Young's critics.

He's an amazing passer, but he goes multiple possessions without letting anyone else even touch the ball. He's averaging 8 apg (great!) but also 21 Field Goal Attempts per game...as a point guard leading a middling offense -- that's atrocious. In December, he's avg 23 FGA per game. I can't help but notice that the more he shoots, the worst the team performs.

I could stand to see more ball movement and more table setting from Trae. We know he can consistently drop 30 a game in a losing effort, now I want to see more 25 point /12 assist efforts.

Get everybody else easy buckets because of the gravity he pulls alongside him.

[Radioblacktive1]

I see a Trae who still looks for the open man or the cutter but neither are able to score with the opportunity so Trae, who is able to score consistently and relatively easily (floater), loses a bit of trust and looks to score sooner than he used to. For example, Trae has been hitting Kev in the same spots he was hitting him last year only for Kev to brick. 25/12 is great but Trae can have 30+/10+ with relative ease if the team made a lot more of the shots they got.

[jayu70]

^^^I gotta be honest, I'm starting to agree with Barkley and many of Young's critics.

He's an amazing passer, but he goes multiple possessions without letting anyone else even touch the ball. He's averaging 8 apg (great!) but also 21 Field Goal Attempts per game...as a point guard leading a middling offense -- that's atrocious. In December, he's avg 23 FGA per game. I can't help but notice that the more he shoots, the worst the team performs.

I could stand to see more ball movement and more table setting from Trae. We know he can consistently drop 30 a game in a losing effort, now I want to see more 25 point /12 assist efforts.

Get everybody else easy buckets because of the gravity he pulls alongside him.

It's doesn't only fall on his shoulders for him taking the shots he does sometimes.
Sometimes his teammates just suck and he is forced to take the shots. Or he gives it up only for them to pass it right back to him.
Sometimes he's too late to pass out of a double team when he gets trapped, he's missing some easy 'hockey' assists for holding the ball to long. Make the pass that leads to the pass for the score. Sometimes in those trap his teammates need to step up and make themselves available for a quicker pass. I don't want him leading the team in shot attempts, but we have been bad for most of the season.

[Jamaaliver]

To his credit, Trae really competed last night defensively. He fought through screens, he got back in transition.

Utah targeted him relentlessly, but he hung in there.

Ten NBA things I like and don't like

4. Trae Young's defense

Young can be a special offensive player, but Atlanta will go nowhere serious until he buys in on defense.

There is too much of this: Young upright, flat-footed, arms at his side. That stance makes him slow snapping into action away from the ball. He can be late scurrying around screens, and he often just smacks into them. He is a piece of floating tissue everyone else just shoves away.

Atlanta has allowed 117 points per 100 possessions with Young on the floor -- and 103 when he sits, per NBA.com. Lots of factors beyond Young go into those numbers, but his play contributes. He ranks 435th among 438 players in ESPN's defensive real plus-minus after finishing dead last a year ago.

For years, Young has been compared to Stephen Curry. When Curry is a liability on defense, it is only because of his skinny frame. Curry is a fighter. He gets in a stance, spreads his arms and executes Golden State's scheme. He didn't make the Warriors' defense, but he didn't break it, either.

ESPN

[Jamaaliver]

Trae Young in that upper right quadrant with increased usage and improved efficiency...

[Jamaaliver]

Man, how quickly they move on to the next big thing...

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

NBA Playmaker Tiers: Ranking the league’s top ‘quarterbacks’

Tier 3: Alpha Dogs with Asterisks

These four players are legitimately awesome offensive players, but for various reasons it’s a little bit more difficult to play through them than with the top-tier quarterbacks:

9. Trae Young, Atlanta



Young is arguably the league’s most pathetic defender, but we aren’t worrying about that here. Offensively, he is the league’s most brilliant little man. He’s a one-man offense in Atlanta because he has to be, with the Hawks lack of anything resembling a secondary threat forcing Young into an extreme high-usage role that is probably too much even for his considerable talents. Consider this amazing stat: Young is taking over 20 shots a game with 59.5 TS%, and the Hawks are still last in the league in Offensive Efficiency.

Young is one of the league‘s most gifted lob passers and a sneaky dribbler who will embarrass fools at least once a night with his right-to-left crossover going away from a screen. He has incredible touch on right-hand floaters that he takes at nearly full speed, shooting range to midcourt, and a great sense of where to snap passes (sometimes putting them between defender’s legs).

Young does have his warts. Traps can swallow him up and too many of his more adventurous passes land in enemy hands. He rarely gets all the way to the rim for the game’s highest percentage shots and size can swallow him up once he arrives there. Finally, he doesn’t shoot nearly as well on 40-foot pulls ups with 18 on the clock as he seems to think — one reason his 3-point percentage (37.5 percent) hovers in good-but-not-great territory.

Nonetheless, the Hawks’ offense sinks into the muck without Young, although that is partly because they haven’t had a real backup point guard the entire season (#FreeBrandonGoodwin).

Young is a true quarterback at the age of 21, and likely will move into the next tier if he can clean up some of the turnovers and iffy shots.

The Athletic

[King Ken]

Man, how quickly they move on to the next big thing...

Read on Twitter

Technically, it's not out of the question that he does but it will be extremely hard. Trae Young once the team starts winning and build a contender with the right personnel, it's likely that Trae will always be seen in a higher light.

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

Trae Young Performs Like a Star. Does That Make Him an All-Star?

Young’s dazzling passes and from-the-logo range are worthy of the game’s biggest spotlight. But should big numbers on an 11-win team earn him a spot among the game’s best players?



By credentials alone, Young is a borderline All-Star: a dazzling creator for one of the league’s worst teams...Young makes an 11-34 Atlanta team eminently watchable—perfect for a League Pass diversion. Watch the Hawks for long enough and you’ll see Young make plays his peers wouldn’t dare: unconscionably long 3s, outlandish passes, and the spiciest of nutmegs. It’s enough to bring an entire game to a halt, or perhaps more importantly, a fan scrolling aimlessly through their phone. From a series of tightly framed clips dramatized in slow motion, one could be convinced that Young is already one of the NBA’s very best players.

The reality is more complicated. Young is wildly productive and stylistically distinct, which has allowed his stardom to outpace his actual impact. It’s easy to appreciate the 29.2 points that Young averages nightly, the most of any player beyond James Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Yet how should we square that kind of scoring with what is ultimately a failing offense?

In terms of his skill level, Young is unimpeachable; no one stumbles into this level of scoring or playmaking, regardless of their opportunities. Working off of Young’s gravity and passing has done wonders for the efficiency of Kevin Huerter (whose effective field goal percentage jumps by 19 percent with Young on the floor) and John Collins (14 percent).

What makes for good basketball doesn’t always make for great entertainment. Although Young is both a bonafide sensation and a serious basketball talent, his career hasn’t quite found that equilibrium. Young was always going to be an All-Star, one way or another; no healthy player with his scoring average has ever been passed over entirely.

The nuances of Young’s role and his truly disastrous defense don’t matter as much to the average fan as the prospect that he might pull up from halfcourt. This is an entirely valid worldview, and one that’s essential to the operations of the league. Functioning as an entertainment business means showcasing Young over better, subtler players. This isn’t some great injustice—it’s the NBA working along its inherent contradiction.

The Ringer

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter