Seven seasons of hard work, media narratives, and endless rumors have brought us to this point.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After being drafted third overall in 2018, Trae Young has been a surprisingly controversial player by NBA standards. His commitment has been publicly ridiculed throughout his career, as has his leadership<\/a> and defense. Most importantly, he\u2019s been labeled \u201cnot a winning player.” There are nuggets of truth to these claims, but these narratives have been blown out of proportion so much that they have defined Young\u2019s career to many fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now that the Atlanta Hawks have finally put together a roster capable of competing at a high level, Young finally has a fair chance to prove himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n How will Young respond to this pressure<\/p>\n The Hawks have not only built a talented team, but one that is perfectly suited for Trae Young. His defensive limitations are supported by the best perimeter defender in the league, Dyson Daniels, at the two-guard spot. Behind Daniels are other long and athletic wing defenders able to help Young.<\/p>\n Atlanta has also perfected their offensive core, surrounding the best passer in the league with shooters, secondary creators, and rim rollers. Kristaps Porzingis and Luke Kennard are two of the league\u2019s best shooters; Jalen Johnson and Dyson Daniels are lethal slashing threats and attack closeouts well.<\/p>\n With this roster, Young can finally begin to address his critics<\/a>. Yes, he hasn\u2019t won at a high level yet, nor has he played at an MVP level. But these criticisms have always been unfair to Young. Entering his prime at just 26 years old, Young has time to reverse the narrative surrounding him.<\/p>\n He has improved remarkably as a defender, giving real effort and bulking up to the point where he is no longer a massive liability. While his size will always limit his defensive ability, we have seen players with similar defensive limitations become impactful defenders with the right scheme and supporting talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Steph Curry is a prime example of this phenomenon. Curry led the league in steals in his prime, despite being labeled a bad defender early in his career. He was never a strong one-on-one defender, and he was always the player targeted on defense. Still, he found a way to be impactful through thoughtful and consistent defensive play.\u00a0<\/p>\n The offensive side of the game, however, is where Young will make the biggest leap. With the talent Atlanta acquired, Young has his best offensive supporting cast in his NBA career by far. It is hard to understate the impact of replacing Clint Capela with Porzingis and Georges Niang with Kennard. If Zaccharie Risacher can improve upon his excellent rookie season, the Hawks might just have the best supporting cast for their star in the league.<\/p>\n The question left for Young to address is whether this improved offensive help can help him fix his waning efficiency. Despite being a lethal scorer, Young has not scored particularly efficiently in recent memory. This often happens for players who are asked to shoulder the team\u2019s entire offensive load, like Young has. While improvement to his efficiency isn’t guaranteed, with an easier shot diet and the revamped offense, it is hard to imagine Young not improving in this regard.<\/p>\n Health seems to be Atlanta\u2019s biggest challenge this season. Johnson has shown signs of being an injury risk, and Porzingis has proven to be one as well. If the Hawks can remain relatively healthy, however, expect Trae Young to find his way into MVP ballots<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven seasons of hard work, media narratives, and endless rumors have brought us to this point.\u00a0 After being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-115688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}