Hawks’ Young is playing amazing, but not wanting to talk about stats
His points and assists per game put him in rare company, but he’s not in debate over who is MVP
The numbers that Atlanta guard Trae Young has been putting up regularly are historic: 28.3 points and 11.2 assists per game entering Tuesday. Keep that up for an entire season, and he’ll do something that only Oscar Robertson, Tiny Archibald and James Harden have accomplished.
Stats like those typically get a player at least mentioned in the most-valuableplayer conversation.
With Young, it might not even be a guarantee that he’ll be in the All-Star conversation.
The Hawks opened their post-Christmas schedule at Chicago on Tuesday night, and Young came close to pulling off NBA history.
He’d had at least 30 points and 10 assists in each of his last seven games, tying Robertson’s league-record stretch done in the 1964-65 season. On Tuesday, he fell short, scoring 21 points with 13 assists in a 118-113 loss. No other player has managed that in more than five consecutive games.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m going to stop you right there,” Young said after he tied Robertson’s mark.
“Let’s go to another question. I don’t want to talk about my stats. Let’s talk about something else. Thank you, though. Appreciate you.”
Maybe that’s a sign of maturity from Young, who has a swagger that can be perceived as arrogance. To his credit, he’s 6 feet 1 and might be the lightest player in the league; the Hawks list him at 180 pounds, which seems generous.
He doesn’t often let being the smallest player on the floor impede him in any way when it comes to putting up numbers.
But sometimes, his numbers get looked at as empty calories.
Young’s stretch of 30point, 10-assist games seemed barely noticed, what with the NBA going into its Christmas schedule and with Detroit on a 27-game slide that set the record for the worst single-season run in NBA history with Tuesday’s loss against Brooklyn.
And it should be noted, the banged-up Hawks went 3-4 in those seven games with Young on that 30-10 tear. Great numbers, not great results.
“You can’t evaluate a player’s performance necessarily based on their stat line,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “That’s particularly true when you have a playmaker or a leader on the court.”
While Young’s intangible leadership skills also might get lost in the shuffle, if people did evaluate him solely on the numbers, he’d be far more revered.
Young averaged 26.7 points and 10.3 assists before the All-Star break last season — and didn’t make the All-Star Game. In the formula used to determine the starters, Young finished fifth among Eastern Conference guards in the fan voting, sixth in the media voting and, maybe most damning, 12th in voting among fellow players.
There were 375 players who returned All-Star ballots last season (player voting counts as 25% of the formula) and 13 (3.5%) of them listed Young as someone who should start.
Those who got more votes among guards in the East last season: Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell, Jaylen Brown, DeMar DeRozan, Harden, Tyrese Haliburton, Darius Garland, Jalen Brunson, LaMelo Ball, Jrue Holiday and Zach LaVine.
Coaches picked the reserves and he fell short there as well.
“Let me say this: We have a tendency to put Trae under a microscope and that’s a credit to who he is as a player,” Snyder said. “And that’s a good challenge for him . ...
“Players want to improve and they want to be coached.”
Snyder points out some of the things that he believes Young doesn’t get enough credit for, like taking charges — no small feat since basically everyone in the NBA is bigger than he is. Young has helped the Hawks make the playoffs in each of the last three years as well, though at 12-18, Atlanta has some work to do if it will extend that streak next spring.
In fairness, there are things that go unnoticed. There are also things that are noticed.
People in Miami still haven’t forgotten how Young told the fans there that “it’s over” when the Hawks went ahead 117-111 with 59.9 seconds left of a game in 2019. The Heat scored the next 22 points and won by 14 in overtime.
Fans in New York won’t forget how Young took a theatrical bow there when the Hawks were beating the Knicks in the 2021 playoffs, either.
He played up to his newfound supervillain status by appearing in a WWE event at Madison Square Garden later that summer.
Young made it clear that he wasn’t happy about not
being picked for the team that USA Basketball sent to the World Cup in Manila. That, combined with no AllStar nod and not making the All-NBA team last season, seems to have made Young even more defiant.
“If you don’t think I’ve been disrespected, I mean, you’re just not telling the truth,” Young said when this season started.
Maybe he has been disrespected. Maybe he hasn’t merited more respect yet.
His numbers are elite, but for the Hawks — and for Young — to reach their full potential, those numbers need to add up to something bigger than stats.
‘If you don’t think I’ve been disrespected, I mean, you’re just not telling the truth.’
— Trae Young, Atlanta Hawks guard, averaging 28.3 points and 11.2 assists entering Tuesday