Will Trae finally adjust his game this upcoming season

[NBASupes]

22 minutes ago, Final_quest said:

Well, I always ask who are the guys drafted since Trae that are outperforming him?  You can name maybe 2 players, but shouldn't we be glad we have one of the top drafted players of the past 5 years?

I would say in his own class you got Luka, JJJ is more valuable to most teams in the NBA than what Trae is, Mikal, SGA, and Jalen Brunson. 

 

Trae is falling in the Ayton category of players losing position while Brunson is raising as is SGA. 

When you are paying a rookie supermax, it's kinda hard. If Trae was making 2nd contract Curry, it would be a different story

Edited June 5, 2023 by NBASupes

[JayBirdHawk]

5 minutes ago, shakes said:

He didn't adjust his game last off season so I doubt he does it this off season.

 

At this point I've given up on him ever giving a crap about moving without the ball.  That ain't ever happening folks.

Do you think we had a system that promoted this 'off-ball' stuff? Not from Nate we didn't. This is from December 2022:

Quote

The lack of creative offensive punch.
I keep saying I'm not a fan of Nate's coaching style. I'm also not saying I want him fired. I don't want a coaching carousel. But something has got to give. We can't keep having these 4th quarter meltdowns. The predictability of 'Nate' is killing this team.

Speaking of that coaching change, Nate McMillan was the greatest beneficiary of that 2021 run. He inherited, first and foremost, a healthy roster that Lloyd Pierce never enjoyed. Things took off from there. He was rewarded with a four-year contract, but Atlanta's play after that postseason run has never validated McMillan as a true difference-maker. At some point, he will have to answer for that aforementioned bottom-10 offense, a ranking that should be nearly impossible with Young at the helm.

Travis Schlenk, perhaps, didn't do McMillan any favors by trading Kevin Huerter, who has shot the lights out from deep this season in Sacramento. With Bogdan Bogdanovic sidelined until recently, Murray not being a 3-point guy, and Young making fewer than 30 percent of his triples, the Hawks are low on shooting. As a percentage of their shot diet, which is an analytical nightmare, the Hawks take and make the fewest 3s in the league. Only the Bulls rely on making more midrange shots per game.

I've said before - you have to move Trae off-ball with PURPOSE and INTENTION - not just move to move.

It's hard to even say McMillan has instituted any kind of offensive system. Any shot the Hawks get is a result of individual creation, almost entirely by either Young or Murray. The Hawks make the fewest passes per game in the league by a wide margin, and their off-ball movement is virtually nonexistent. Young still hasn't committed to that aspect of his game, and that's on him, but to be fair McMillan hasn't implemented the kind of impromptu screening and cutting culture required to make the movement of a player like Young consistently worthwhile. It takes everyone working together and in anticipation to free up a shooter, not just one guy running around.

 

To be fair, the Hawks finished with the No. 2 offense last season playing largely the same way, ..........but the your-turn-my-turn creation philosophy with Young and Murray feels positively pick-upish. There needs to be a system that can create shots for the shot creators.


McMillan has not proven he's the guy to institute that kind of thing, either because he doesn't believe in such an offense, lacks the creativity to put it in play, or can't get the players, specifically Young, who's used to controlling everything with the ball in his hands, to buy into such a change

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/trae-young-gives-hawks-a-punchers-chance-now-but-their-real-window-should-open-in-a-few-years/amp/

 

7 minutes ago, shakes said:

My new hope is that he grows up and at least improves on his shot selection.  I would also like to see him become a more willing passer early in the shot clock and also a more accurate passer when driving and kicking to the perimeter.  Those are a couple areas where he can definitely improve without changing his entire play style.

This I agree with!

[TheNorthCydeRises]

34 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

Playoff record of players who made the All-NBA team this season, with Trae included in that mix

 

• Stephen Curry        ( 98 - 48 ) . . . 67.8%
• Lebron James         ( 182 - 100 ). . 64.5%
• Jayson Tatum         ( 52 - 42 ) . . . 55.3%
• Jaylen Brown          ( 58 - 47 ) . . . 55.2%
• Giannis                    ( 43 - 36 ) . . . 55.4%
• Nikola Jokic            ( 34 - 31 ) . . .  52.3%
• Jimmy Butler          ( 60 - 57 ) . . .  51.3%
• Joel Embiid             ( 27 - 26 ) . . .  50.9%
• Julius Randle             (  7 - 8 ) . . .  46.7%
• Trae Young              ( 12 - 15 ) . . .  44.4%
• Luka Doncic            ( 12 - 16 ) . . .  42.9%
• De'Aaron Fox             ( 3 - 4 ) . . .   42.9%
• Donovan Mitchell   ( 18 - 26 ) . . .   40.9%
• SGA                           ( 5 - 8 ) . . . .  38.5%
• Damian Lillard        ( 22 - 39 ) . . .  36.1%
• Domatus Sabonis    ( 6 - 14 ) . . . . 30.0%

 

If anything, this list tells me that the young guys who aren't playing with other All-Star caliber players, simply need time to learn how to win in the playoffs.  But all of them need higher caliber players around them, like Lebron and Steph have.

Jimmy doesn't have the expected talent around him, but he has championship level coaching and front office on his side.

Jayson and Jaylen are playing with each other, so that helps the two of them.

Giannis, as great as he is, is only 7 games over .500 in the playoffs.

Trae, Luka, SGA, Fox, and Donovan may all be the future of the league, but they don't have enough with them yet, and it shows during the playoffs.  Well, Luka does, but we'll see if Kyrie stays in Dallas.

Ja Morant is ( 7 - 12 ) in the playoffs.  Devin Booker and Ayton didn't even sniff the playoffs until they got a Hall of Famer to play with them. Siakam got a ring, but only after a Hall of Famer joined him too.

So the narratives when it comes to Trae, are interesting as hell.

That's why I'm all for flipping some of our talent, for another guy who is a high level player that may not have won anything yet, or is having trouble winning by himself.  It's either that, or one of our current guys elevating their games to All-Star level. 

They want Trae to be a perfect basketball player, playing at top 10 of all time level.  But he's getting a ton of money, so I guess that's to be expected.

Trae . . . you have to become the best PG in the history of the game, to satisfy your critics.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

14 minutes ago, shakes said:

He didn't adjust his game last off season so I doubt he does it this off season.

 

At this point I've given up on him ever giving a crap about moving without the ball.  That ain't ever happening folks.

 

My new hope is that he grows up and at least improves on his shot selection.  I would also like to see him become a more willing passer early in the shot clock and also a more accurate passer when driving and kicking to the perimeter.  Those are a couple areas where he can definitely improve without changing his entire play style.

 

Why do you keep harping on him moving without the ball, when we don't have a ball movement offense? 

We don't have multiple guys running around and cutting to the basket.  We don't have triple screens being set to free one guy for a catch and shoot 3 ( which we don't do well anyway, outside of Bogi and A-Hol ).  We don't run a 5-out attack where multiple people are touching the ball.

And every time I ask people to name a PG in this league that is good at moving without the ball, whose name is not Steph Curry, no one ever seems to come up with some other player that does it well.

So who what PG does this well, outside of Curry . . so I can pull up some game film on how he's moving without the ball.

 

 

 

[shakes]

28 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Do you think we had a system that promoted this 'off-ball' stuff? Not from Nate we didn't. This is from December 2022:

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/trae-young-gives-hawks-a-punchers-chance-now-but-their-real-window-should-open-in-a-few-years/amp/

 

 

This is a chicken egg argument.    Did Nate run a system that promoted Trae not moving wihtout the ball or did Nate put in that system because he knew Trae wouldn't run move without the ball?

[shakes]

12 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

 

Why do you keep harping on him moving without the ball, when we don't have a ball movement offense? 

We don't have multiple guys running around and cutting to the basket.  We don't have triple screens being set to free one guy for a catch and shoot 3 ( which we don't do well anyway, outside of Bogi and A-Hol ).  We don't run a 5-out attack where multiple people are touching the ball.

And every time I ask people to name a PG in this league that is good at moving without the ball, whose name is not Steph Curry, no one ever seems to come up with some other player that does it well.

So who what PG does this well, outside of Curry . . so I can pull up some game film on how he's moving without the ball.

 

 

 

Steph Curry.

 

That's teh only name you need.  The only name Trae should need to see the immense benefits his game could get from moving effectively without the ball.

 

There aren't too many other PGs in the league who are capable of being one of the best catch and shoot 3 shooters in the league like Trae is.   There's a reason Trae is always at the top of the league in wide open catch and shoot 3% and there's an equally obvious reason why he has some of the fewest number of wide open catch and shoot 3s of any player in the league.

Trae only needs to follow one playbook to reach his potential, the Steph Curry playbook.

 

But it ain't happening so no point even discussing it anymore.  The new mantra from me is shot selection and marginally improving his passing accuracy on drive and kicks. 

 

EDIT:  Forgot a big one.  need him to stop complaining to refs.  That's a big one.  needs to change that big time.  Needs to stop complaining and put his head down and bust his ass back on defense.  That's all about maturity. 

[JayBirdHawk]

11 minutes ago, shakes said:

This is a chicken egg argument.    Did Nate run a system that promoted Trae not moving wihtout the ball or did Nate put in that system because he knew Trae wouldn't run move without the ball?

. No it's not - Nates offense was the same as it was in Indy. He didn't implement anything different because he can't. And it's not limited to Trae, did any of our players do this? This is the same guy that said he doesn't care what analytics said about 3-point shooting, so he had this team limiting 3 point shot attempts in favour of attacking closeouts and shooting from midrange.

One of the first things Trae said once Quin took over was 'the team had to get used to letting the 3s fly vs waiting for the close out and attacking'

I will contend that this Nate approach caused a lot of the 3pt woes....low volume and low makes.

[JayBirdHawk]

3 minutes ago, shakes said:

Steph Curry.

 

That's teh only name you need.  The only name Trae should need to see the immense benefits his game could get from moving effectively without the ball.

 

There aren't too many other PGs in the league who are capable of being one of the best catch and shoot 3 shooters in the league like Trae is.   There's a reason Trae is always at the top of the league in wide open catch and shoot 3% and there's an equally obvious reason why he has some of the fewest number of wide open catch and shoot 3s of any player in the league.

Trae only needs to follow one playbook to reach his potential, the Steph Curry playbook.

 

But it ain't happening so no point even discussing it anymore.  The new mantra from me is shot selection and marginally improving his passing accuracy on drive and kicks. 

 

EDIT:  Forgot a big one.  need him to stop complaining to refs.  That's a big one.  needs to change that big time.  Needs to stop complaining and put his head down and bust his ass back on defense.  That's all about maturity. 

Again.....how many of his teammates are setting baseline, backscreens,  etc for him. Even Lloyd Pierce said he can't just have Trae running just to run...you have to have his teammates involved in those actions and finally someone to deliver him the ball in scoring position.  Let me know when we have a system that does that and he fails in it.

[bird_dirt]

1 hour ago, shakes said:

EDIT:  Forgot a big one.  need him to stop complaining to refs.  That's a big one.  needs to change that big time.  Needs to stop complaining and put his head down and bust his ass back on defense.  That's all about maturity. 

Hopefully he has a coach who will go to bat for him instead of standing like a cross armed statue when calls aren’t being made. That, and maturity, could go a long way towards breaking that habit. 

[TheNorthCydeRises]

1 hour ago, shakes said:

Steph Curry.

 

That's teh only name you need.  The only name Trae should need to see the immense benefits his game could get from moving effectively without the ball.

 

There aren't too many other PGs in the league who are capable of being one of the best catch and shoot 3 shooters in the league like Trae is.   There's a reason Trae is always at the top of the league in wide open catch and shoot 3% and there's an equally obvious reason why he has some of the fewest number of wide open catch and shoot 3s of any player in the league.

Trae only needs to follow one playbook to reach his potential, the Steph Curry playbook.

 

But it ain't happening so no point even discussing it anymore.  The new mantra from me is shot selection and marginally improving his passing accuracy on drive and kicks. 

 

EDIT:  Forgot a big one.  need him to stop complaining to refs.  That's a big one.  needs to change that big time.  Needs to stop complaining and put his head down and bust his ass back on defense.  That's all about maturity. 

 

But he's not Steph Curry.  No one is Steph Curry.

The biggest reason why the Steph Curry model works, is because he has a facilitating big man they can run offense through.  And the Warriors offense is a true motion type offense.  Steph doesn't have #1 scoring AND facilitation duties.  Trae does.

You and others are taking the easy way out, saying that a coach doesn't even try to put this offense in place with Trae.  They can definitely do that.  Under LP, we had a lot more motion under him, than we ever had with Nate's Isolation ( go at the mismatch ) offense.

Despite Trae's number of turnovers, the Hawks were bottom 5 in turnovers last year.  Why?  Because Trae does all of the heavy lifting with the ball handling AND he's the guy tossing the ball to wide opens shooters or cutters at the rim.

If you want Trae to move more, the entire offense has to be dynamic, with willing passers who can get the ball to the open man.

1 hour ago, shakes said:

This is a chicken egg argument.    Did Nate run a system that promoted Trae not moving wihtout the ball or did Nate put in that system because he knew Trae wouldn't run move without the ball?

 

Since when has Nate had a system where the ball moved?

3 different fan bases has complained about that.

 

There's your answer.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

. No it's not - Nates offense was the same as it was in Indy. He didn't implement anything different because he can't. And it's not limited to Trae, did any of our players do this? This is the same guy that said he doesn't care what analytics said about 3-point shooting, so he had this team limiting 3 point shot attempts in favour of attacking closeouts and shooting from midrange.

One of the first things Trae said once Quin took over was 'the team had to get used to letting the 3s fly vs waiting for the close out and attacking'

I will contend that this Nate approach caused a lot of the 3pt woes....low volume and low makes.

 

Nate's offense would probably work, if he had more than 2 guys who could put the ball on the floor and get their own basket.  In this offense, we have Trae and Dejounte who can do it.  Hunter can do it off and on.  Collins can only do it via post ups.  And while Bogi can do it as well, he's much more dangerous with catch and shoot opportunities.

Nate's offense is also a low turnover offense.  Since the ball isn't moving much, it's either in Trae's or Dejonte's hands as a scorer/facilitator, or the rest of the team is taking shot as soon as they touch the ball.

If we only have 3 guys who average more than 0.5 Secondary Assists per game, that means the ball either doesn't move, or it is shot as soon as the first meaningful pass is made.

 

 

[akay]

13 hours ago, NBASupes said:

You can't keep seeing coaches and his peers roll their eyes at him and think Trae isn't a part of the issue

If Trae is such an issue, why did DJM and Snyder join the Hawks to explicitly work with Trae? They didn't join for JC or Dre or any other reason.

You don't request a trade here or become the HC if you don't believe in the star players' game.

Trae is gonna lead atl to a chip in his career here playing his game how he's been doin, and all these threads are gonna be some nice juice to go through 

[JustSomeGuy]

There is a bit of a misnomer within this convo considering he’s never had an actual offensive coach or system to play within.

Since he’s been here the literal offense has been “Give it to Trae” not to mention not playing with a lot Of equally talented players. Nate was not a player or ball movement guy,  Lloyd Pierce didn’t offer much of anything at all. So it’s more accurate to say I am interested to see him play within a system. HopefullY it will help him get some easier looks. 

[NBASupes]

1 hour ago, JustSomeGuy said:

There is a bit of a misnomer within this convo considering he’s never had an actual offensive coach or system to play within.

Since he’s been here the literal offense has been “Give it to Trae” not to mention not playing with a lot Of equally talented players. Nate was not a player or ball movement guy,  Lloyd Pierce didn’t offer much of anything at all. So it’s more accurate to say I am interested to see him play within a system. HopefullY it will help him get some easier looks. 

I think we have a lot of talented players. 

[JayBirdHawk]

2 hours ago, bird_dirt said:

Hopefully he has a coach who will go to bat for him instead of standing like a cross armed statue robot when calls aren’t being made. That, and maturity, could go a long way towards breaking that habit. 

Fixed.

[JayBirdHawk]

6 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

I think we have a lot of talented players. 

Are any of them (besides DJ) close enough to Trae's level? Where teams are selling out to stop them?

[Diesel]

8 hours ago, Final_quest said:

We were a nightmare and haven't been able to match the personnel we had back then. A lot of the same names, but they aren't the same players which confuses people and shifts the blame unfairly to Trae.  

Not a lot...

We lost great shooters.   Gallo, Delon, Lou, Kev,   and then JC's shooting went to trash and only got better to end out this season. 

I think we have to quit thinking that you can just plug and play certain players.   The truth is that certain players bring skillsets that fit a certain way.   We have to find those skillsets in replacement.  or better skillsets. 

 

[Diesel]

2 hours ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

Nate's offense is also a low turnover offense.  Since the ball isn't moving much, it's either in Trae's or Dejonte's hands as a scorer/facilitator, or the rest of the team is taking shot as soon as they touch the ball.

Im trying to remember if Nate had Dame Time and McCollough. 

15 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Are any of them (besides DJ) close enough to Trae's level? Where teams are selling out to stop them?

You make a good point.   When teams sell out to stop Trae, there does need to be a secondary plan. 

[JayBirdHawk]

5 minutes ago, Diesel said:

Im trying to remember if Nate had Dame Time and McCollough. 

Don't think so - LaMarcus Aldridge etc.

[macdaddy]

Trae has weaknesses for sure.  Just seems like he's proven he can win even without another all star on the team.  In the last 3 years, Hawks record is 125-111 with 3 playoff appearances and a 13-16 playoff record. 

Not contending level by any means but not horrible as the team's only elite offensive weapon. 

Add another all star level player, especially in the frontcourt, and i think we can have a contender.