The numbers that Atlanta guard Trae Young are placing up are historic: 28.3 factors and 11.2 assists per sport coming into Tuesday. Keep that up for a whole season, and he’ll do one thing that solely Oscar Robertson, Tiny Archibald and James Harden have completed.
Stats like these usually get a participant not less than talked about in an MVP dialog.
With Young, it may not even be a assure that he’ll be within the All-Star dialog.
The Hawks open their post-Christmas schedule at Chicago on Tuesday night time, with Young making an attempt to do one thing that no one has ever pulled off in NBA historical past. He’s had not less than 30 factors and 10 assists in every of his final seven video games, tying Robertson’s league-record stretch finished within the 1964-65 season. Other than Robertson, till now, had ever managed that in additional than 5 consecutive video games.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m going to stop you right there,” Young mentioned 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 an indication of maturity from Young, who has a assured swagger that may be perceived as conceitedness. To his credit score, he’s 6-foot-1 and is perhaps the lightest man within the league; the Hawks record him at 180 kilos, which appears beneficiant. He doesn’t typically let being the smallest participant on the ground impede him in any method on the subject of placing up numbers.
But generally, his numbers get checked out as empty energy. Young’s stretch of 30-point, 10-assist video games appeared barely observed, what with the league going into its Christmas schedule and with Detroit on a 26-game slide that tied the worst single-season run in NBA historical past going into its matchup Tuesday towards Brooklyn.
And it ought to be famous, the banged-up Hawks went 3-4 in these seven video games with Young on this 30-10 tear. Great numbers, not nice outcomes.
“You can’t evaluate a player’s performance necessarily based on their stat line,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder mentioned. “That’s particularly true when you have a playmaker or a leader on the court.”
While Young’s intangible management abilities additionally may get misplaced within the shuffle, if folks did consider him solely on the numbers, he’d be much more revered.
Young averaged 26.7 factors and 10.3 assists earlier than the All-Star break final season – and didn’t make the All-Star Game. In the method used to find out the starters, Young completed fifth amongst Eastern Conference guards within the fan voting, sixth within the media voting and, possibly most damning, twelfth in voting amongst fellow gamers. There had been 375 gamers who returned All-Star ballots final season (participant voting counts as 25% of the method) and 13 (3.5%) of them listed Young as somebody who ought to begin.
Those who acquired extra votes amongst gamers within the East guard class final season: Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell, Jaylen Brown, DeMar DeRozan, James Harden, Tyrese Haliburton, Darius Garland, Jalen Brunson, LaMelo Ball, Jrue Holiday and Zach LaVine. Coaches picked the reserves and he fell quick there as effectively.
“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 mentioned. “And that’s a good challenge for him. … Players want to improve and they want to be coached.”
Snyder factors out a few of the issues that he believes Young doesn’t get sufficient credit score for, like taking costs – no small feat since mainly everybody within the NBA is greater than he’s. Young has helped the Hawks make the playoffs in every of the final three years as effectively, although at 12-17 coming into Tuesday, Atlanta has some work to do if it can prolong that streak subsequent spring.
In equity, there are issues that go unnoticed. There are additionally issues which are observed.
People in Miami nonetheless haven’t forgotten how Young informed the followers there that “it’s over” when the Hawks went up 117-111 with 59.9 seconds left of a sport in 2019. It, certainly, was over: The Heat scored the following 22 factors and received by 14 in additional time. Fans in New York received’t neglect how Young took a theatrical bow there when the Hawks had been beating the Knicks within the 2021 playoffs, both. He performed as much as his newfound supervillain standing by showing in a WWE occasion at Madison Square Garden later that summer season.
Young made it clear that he wasn’t blissful about not being picked for the staff that USA Basketball despatched to the World Cup in Manila earlier this yr. That, mixed with no All-Star nod and never making the All-NBA staff final season, appears to have made Young much more defiant.
“If you don’t think I’ve been disrespected, I mean, you’re just not telling the truth,” Young mentioned when this season began.
Maybe he has been disrespected. Maybe he hasn’t merited extra respect but.
His numbers are elite, however for the Hawks – and for Young – to succeed in their full potential, these numbers want so as to add as much as one thing greater than stats.
___
Tim Reynolds is a nationwide basketball author for The Associated Press. Write to him at treynolds(at)ap.org
___
