Trae Young - The Man, The Viper, and The Prosecution aka The MVP aka Ice Trae

[NBASupes]

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

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“I’ve had a couple people in games, when they’re guarding me or in a deadball, they’ll whisper, they’ll come over and just talk to me and be like ‘You’re a bad m-f,’” Young said. “It’s just respect. It’s a respect thing. When you get trapped the way I do, guarded the way I do, for me, it’s a sign of respect and I embrace i

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So Young brushes off his success on an individual level. Those losses, when I play good, stick with me. Because I hate that feeling when I play good individually, numbers-wise, but we don’t win. Because you can’t enjoy it, especially if you’re a competitor like me.” 

 

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Still, Young expects more of himself. With his size (6-foot-1, 180 pounds), Young often struggles on defense, and he’s averaging five turnovers a game.

“You can do a lot more,” Young said. “It’s crazy to say, it’s crazy to hear, but that’s just the realness. I think I can do a lot more. And whether it’s sliding over and taking charges on big men while they’re rolling, doing something. I can do more. I’ve just got to figure it out and find a way. I’ve got to figure it out and our team has to do a better job of figuring it out, too. We’ll get it right.”

Love, love this attitude!

[Dnice]

 

[TheFuzz]

15 minutes ago, Dnice said:

 

Hope he never tries to make it as an actor, lol.

[JayBirdHawk]

 

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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.

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.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/12/12/21011805/top-25-nba-players-ranking-2019-20

[JayBirdHawk]

 

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Last year, one of Pierce’s main tasks was how to figure out how to make older players on the roster lead and how to make the younger players “older.” That meant more game experience, how to handle the ups and downs of the NBA season, how to take care of their bodies after back-to-back games and, specifically for Young, how to manage his way through a full season and remain durable without burning himself out, how to insert Huerter into the starting lineup and boost his confidence.

“What you learn is you can’t speed up the process with young guys,” Pierce said. “They just have to go through it and, in that situation, we need other guys to step up. That’s the ups and downs that we’re going through. We don’t have the luxury to really have that margin of error because we are playing our young guys a ton; however, they have to learn on the fly and pick up some nuances.”

Pierce joked that Instagram should really be called “Instantgratificationgram.” It’s hard managing the egos of young players who want personal and team success immediately when the situation the Hawks are in isn’t going to lend itself to much success, particularly with wins.

That’s what Young is having the hardest time processing in his sophomore season. Young is putting up star-like numbers on a nightly basis, but that is not resulting in wins for the Hawks.

After the team was demolished by the Houston Rockets last month, Russell Westbrook talked with Young after the game and told him about the time when he was a rookie and lost 13 consecutive games and won only once in a 22-game stretch.

“Look at Russ now,” Young said. “He’s been to the Finals. He’s now in Houston and winning a lot of games. There are positives at the end of the day. If you don’t go through something like this, it’s usually not a good thing.”

Chris Paul is one of Young’s mentors dating to high school days and has reminded Young to stay positive. The first year Young and his father, Ray, had season tickets to the Oklahoma City Thunder was Paul’s rookie season, when the New Orleans Hornets relocated after Hurricane Katrina. The Hornets finished below .500 in Paul’s first two seasons before winning the Southwest Division in his third season.

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[Thomas]

9 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

Rather good company Trae is keeping there and he could still feasibly end up with more than Shaq. Records are made to be broken, some take longer than others.

[JayBirdHawk]

40 years since the 3 pointer was introduced 

 

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Young was at a physical disadvantage almost every time he stepped on the floor, and it was one of the reasons Merritt mainly only used Young as a spot-up shooter in the ninth grade. But Young wasn’t the typical 2-guard because of how short and skinny he was. He couldn’t spot up from the 3-point line because of the size difference, so Young had to move his range farther back and shoot before the defender could get in his face.

Young tried to get up at least 500 shots per day when he was in high school, and around 50 of those 500 shots would be deep 3-point attempts. When Young would pull up several feet behind the 3-point line in games, Merritt didn’t have any negative reaction because he had seen him do it countless times in practice.

“He had to do this at such a young age where he could pull up from 30 to 35 feet,” Merritt said. “Most people don’t have to do that because it’s not a necessity because they don’t get to play until they’re a sophomore or junior. When you’re going out there as a ninth-grader — he probably didn’t play against a ninth-grader all year. Ninth-graders normally don’t play 6A basketball in Oklahoma. He was probably the only one. He had to do something, otherwise he wouldn’t have been successful.

“When he was a freshman, he might have been shooting from 24 feet. He wasn’t pulling up from the jump circle like he was when he was older because he was so little. The 24-foot shot was clean, and the 20-foot shot was contested by a guy that was bigger than him. That’s how he came to shoot those longer shots.”

Young said his confidence during his freshman season when it came to his deep-range 3-point attempts peaked when he made seven of them in a game, including three from the logo of Norman North’s gym. When Young was a sophomore, Merritt told him that he didn’t care where he shot from as long as the percentages remained high. If that meant shooting from the other side of half court, then so be it. Merritt wasn’t going to limit Young’s range because he shot better than 40 percent from 3-point range. In his junior and senior seasons, he was pulling up from the jump circle, Merritt said. Young scored 62 points and made 12 3s in one game his senior season, and the majority of those 3s were from well beyond the 3-point line.

 

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Young’s ability to shoot from distance with accuracy was Merritt’s dream. He compares it to the early days of college football programs running the spread offense. It’s the same concept in basketball — a player who is a threat to shoot from 30 feet and beyond gives his teammates more space to operate and stretches defenses. When you combined his long-range abilities with his elite passing skill, Young practically was unguardable in high school and became a 5-star recruit wanted by the top programs in college basketball.

The comparisons between Young and Golden State’s Steph Curry grew rapidly because of the shared shot profile, and it continued when Young stayed home and played for Oklahoma. Young didn’t start shooting his long 3s because of Curry, but those shots started becoming accepted because of Curry’s success in college at Davidson and in the NBA.

“It was kind of perfect timing because Steph was doing it and playing really well and showed that you can have success with it,” Young said. “It really was perfect timing for me. When I saw Steph do it, to be honest, I wanted to do it more often

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[marco102]

I didn't know where to post this, but this is an extremely fair breakdown of Trae Young.  He has some really good stats regarding Trae's improvements.

 

[enrique]

On 1/4/2020 at 9:57 PM, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

As a nice update to the stat counting...Trae now has 9 games (1 away from tying the record) of 40 plus points in his first 2 NBA season. Only Shaq-daddy is standing in the way. Ironically there couldn’t be two more different players to share this record than the Basketball-behemoth and the Basketball-burner known as 🧊 Trae 

[NBASupes]

 

[enrique]

13 hours ago, NBASupes said:

 

And here's another from basketball reference...

Crazy!!!!

No idea...that is freaking amazing company!!!

It's funny that last night I was wanting some NBA action and all I got was looking up stats and tweets (barring a few sessions of Mavericks ball...they are solid and well put together by the way)

Edited January 28, 2020 by enrique

[enrique]

Adding the joy of another IceTrae performance...

 

[hawkzlova123]

Trae freaking Young!!!

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[Thomas]

10 hours ago, enrique said:

Adding the joy of another IceTrae performance...

 

Absolutely stunning company Trae is keeping now.

[enrique]

On 1/27/2020 at 6:03 PM, marco102 said:

I didn't know where to post this, but this is an extremely fair breakdown of Trae Young.  He has some really good stats regarding Trae's improvements.

 

My only issue is saying Doncic is a better passer...I'm not sold on that one statement...we will see. To me, Trae's vision and passing are really top tier. No doubt Doncic has a great BB IQ and that leads to anticipatory assists, but Trae is unreal in that arena too. My one issue is that Trae is still trying too many long passes that lead to TOs, but he also makes a lot of those too. Ironically, Trae's usage has gone up this year. His AST% has gone up this year. BUT (and this is a positive thing) his TO% has dropped from last year.