A little less than a minute into Sunday’s first round opener between the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks and first-place Miami Heat, Atlanta’s Trae Young got the ball to the right side of the floor and threw a couple of fruitless dribbles at Miami’s Kyle Lowry, and hucked a 25-foot with 15 seconds left on the shot clock. I watched the replay a few times and couldn’t tell for sure if the ball hit the rim or just the back wall: whatever it bounced off, it bounced at about 75 mph. He might as well have dropped it out of the halffield. He could hardly have given up a possession more completely if he had spent it on buying a hot dog.
On the Hawks’ next possession, after Miami’s Bam Adebayo switched to the ball at the top of the key, Young picked up his dribbling about 28 feet from the basket before almost committing a turnover, turning an ill-advised pass into a difficult float left guarded Danilo Gallinari over Adebayo’s longer arms. A few possessions later, again with Adebayo coming on for him, Young unnecessarily resumed his dribbling on the edge. This time he inexplicably threw a simultaneously hopeless and rushing Eephus ball towards but just short of a well-marked Onyeka Okongwu in the middle of the lane, and this time it resulted in a turnover. A minute later, the Hawks bizarrely ran a pair of staggered screens at the top of the key to reunite Young with Adebayo – you might think it was the matchup they wanted, but for the fact their star kept spitting his Shirtfront every time they got it. On that occasion, Young freaked out, resumed his dribbling, frantically threw the ball at Kevin Huerter in the corner with Lowry hanging all over him, and retreated into midfield.
Young made his next shot attempt with about five-and-a-half minutes left in the first quarter, another oddly frantic dribble-dribble-dribble backstep three early in the shot clock, this time in front of Miami’s utterly unfaithful Max Strus, who, quite hilariously, just stood raised the entire time arm there. This one definitely hit the rim and not the backboard, which is pretty much all there is to say about it.
Recognition: via NBA.com
The whole game went like this for Young, save for a smooth one-on transition finish late in the first quarter that turned out to be his only field goal of the night. He dribbled when he should have passed, picked up his dribbling when he should have kept it alive, shot when he should have done something else and panicked almost every time he saw Bam Adebayo in front of him. In the second quarter, Young found himself around 30 feet from the basket after Miami’s Gabe Vincent opted not to stick with him by dribbling backwards near midfield. He took a few seconds to take in the view and then smashed a set shot harmlessly off the back of the rim. In the third quarter, 22 down, he brought the ball up in transition, dribbled right into Lowry’s wingspan and fired a 28-foot punt from the front of the basket with 18 seconds remaining on the shot clock. It was his last shot of the game; He sat out the fourth quarter and the Hawks lost by 24, 115-91. Overall, Young shot 1 for 12, missing all seven of his three-point attempts and turning the ball six times against four assists. That was only on the offensive end; Needless to say, the Heat scored much of their 115 points by targeting one of the NBA’s most vulnerable defenders.
That the East’s rested top seed won their series opener at home against a team that had struggled through two play-in games last week comes as no shock, nor is it particularly surprising that the consistently best player is consistently at the lowest the conference’s playoff seed had a very terrible away game. The point here isn’t to suggest any particular analytical angle — let’s agree that the Hawks are unlikely to win a game or playoff series in which their best player and highest-grossing possession owner shoots eight percent off the floor — but rather to observe Trae Young’s perhaps unique ability among true NBA star players to look like a complete and total jerk on a night off.
Surely this is at least partly an artifact of Young being very small and playing with borderline insane confidence at all times. When those Ave Mary chest pass shots go in — which, honestly, doesn’t happen that often given how often he pumps them up and with how much obvious confidence he does it with, but as the New York Knicks know, Young will sometimes flush a bunch of them in rapid succession and suddenly your season is over – you have no choice but to marvel at his wits. When it doesn’t, marvel at the succession of slapstick arena safety meltdowns contained in the presence of this incredibly upbeat little kid on the court during a professional game.
In between and around those goofy heatchecks, however, Young at his best has the patience and presence of mind to keep his dribbling alive against slower opponents – and all opponents are slower than him – and to use his unparalleled quickness to fire into the middle of defense and let them collapse around him. When he gets there he has the vision, creativity, dexterity and flair to make a hundred good things happen. Those qualities make it one of the NBA’s most entertaining shows, and in a thousand years you’d never guess that the frantic little guy who makes absolutely every single wrong decision on Sundays would own even one of them. You might not believe that he’s played a lot of basketball in his entire life!
Afterwards, in Young’s charmingly upbeat Q-and-A session, a reporter asked if he was attributing the Game 1 nightmare to “tired legs,” or if it was something like that [the Heat] did on the defensive side that was hard to drop for shots,” and he wisely granted both:
“I think it was a bit of both. I mean we played less than 48 hours ago, one o’clock game, um, I mean having to win three games in a row to really get to this point, two along the way – I mean you can definitely feel me my, talking boys you can definitely feel the heavy legs. But you have to give them credit, they came out aggressive, they were gone and they came out with a lot of energy and they fed on the energy of the crowd and they were just making a few shots and making plays, so you have to give them credit too.”
That all seems reasonable to me; Anyway, I’m sure he knows better than I do. In that case, I recommend lots of rest and relaxation before Game 2 on Tuesday night, and also, I don’t know, maybe swing the ball around a bit?