A respectable grade for the Hawks:
Despite those who harp on the Hawks’ lack of success over Young’s short tenure thus far, or seemingly glance over his already-prolific ability to score the basketball compounded with elite playmaking abilities by hammering home his defensive inadequacies — he is having a historic start to his career. There is no way around that.
Below is a list of 21-year-old’s who have averaged at least 30 points and 9 assists for a season. The list isn’t exactly long, by the looks of it, there is only one player on it: Trae Young.
| Crit | Crit | Crit | Per | Per | Per | Per | Per | Per | Per | Per | Shoo | Shoo | Shoo | Shoo | Shoo | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Player | Season | Age | PTS | AST | WS | MP | FGA | 3PA | FTA | TRB | STL | BLK | TOV | FG% | 3P% | eFG% | FT% | TS% |
| 1 | Trae Young | 2019-20 | 21 | 30.1 | 9.2 | 5.6 | 35.5 | 20.9 | 9.5 | 9.3 | 4.4 | 1.1 | 0.1 | 4.8 | .443 | .369 | .527 | .859 | .601 |
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/28/2020.
And the fact that he’s commanding such a high-usage (38.7 percent, per Cleaning the Glass) and his volume of attempts is that high —without taking into consideration degree of difficulty in some looks— you get a pretty stern illustration of his unique talent.
Likewise, he isn’t necessarily forfeiting efficiency. For the season, he boasts a true shooting percentage of 60.1 percent.
He’s a marketable star that is an absolute thrill to watch when he is at his best, and he is likely to only improve as time progresses.
That aforementioned additional draft selection that was involved in the trade turned out to be Cam Reddish, who has begun to gel and find rhythm within the Hawks’ offense.
However, despite the brilliance of Young’s offensive game and the Hawks being in a prime position to make noise in the near-distant future, this all came at the expense of relinquishing the rights to Luka Doncic. Which, in any world, is not ideal.
But it’s clearly not all bad, despite the team’s struggle to find footing and string together some victories. The Hawks should be good, Young is a megastar in the making, if his offensive repertoire hasn’t already made him one. Signaling that they brutally misfired on this trade is wrong.