This season will be a make-or-break campaign for Trae Young and the Hawks. So far, he hasn't broken them, but they're not exactly making it either.
The Hawks are 5-4, tied for the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference. But they also rank seventh in SRS (strength-of-schedule adjusted scoring margin) and logged wins over Minnesota and Milwaukee, which could mean they have a higher ceiling than their record indicates.
But their fortunes are still indelibly wrapped up in the production of Young, who is among the league leaders in minutes per game and has had the ball in his hands, on average, for 7.7 minutes per game — more than any player in the league other than Luka Doncic.
He is putting up some huge offensive numbers but it's not entirely clear how much it's actually helping the Hawks.
The bottom has fallen out on Trae Young's shooting percentages
Through nine games, Young is shooting 40 percent on 2-pointers and 29.4 percent from beyond the arc on neatly eight attempts per game. He's yet to make at least half his shots in a game this season and he managed it just once in last year's six-game postseason run. Combine this nine-game sample with last year's regular-season and postseason and he's made at least half his shots just 20 times in his last 88 games.
The result is shooting efficiency that is trending dramatically downward and is, right now, in historically awful territory. His effective field goal percentage this season (41.7) would be tied for third-worst all-time by a player with a usage rate above 30 percent who played at least 1000 minutes and falls in a range pretty much only occupied by late-career Allen Iverson, post-Achilles injury Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan's final Wizards' season and a 30-year-old Shawn Kemp leading then Cavaliers' offense.
To be fair to Young, scoring is not far from the only area in which he provides offensive value. He's assisting on over 40 percent of the Hawks' made baskets when he's on the floor. Even with his shooting struggles, his playmaking generates significant gravity and draws defensive attention.
Young is also a fantastic foul shooter and gets to the line nearly 10 times per game. His true shooting percentage, which factors in scoring volume and efficiency from the free-throw line, is far more respectable than his effective field goal percentage. However, it's still way below average, especially for a high-volume creator, and it's trending downward.
Again, we're only nine games into this season but his 2-point percentage and 3-point percentage have both regressed for the second straight season, as have his turnovers and assist percentage. Consequently, his Offensive Box Plus-Minus (a box-score-based estimate of a player's offensive impact per 100 possessions) is less than half of what it was two seasons ago. Considering he's also among the worst defensive players in the league, his net impact this season is barely positive.
This all begs the question of whether the Hawks would be better off without Trae Young.
It seems crazy to ask about a player averaging 24.4 points and 10.2 assists per game but it's a legitimate question. Setting aside the value he provides relative to his contract, the Hawks are plus-1.5 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor and plus-8.5 with him on the bench.
They have a top-five offense and a bottom-10 defense and Young's fingerprints are all over them equally, especially considering that the only statistical categories in which their offense really stands out are free throw rate and offensive rebound percentage, and you can draw a direct line to him on both.
Trading Young, regardless of the return, would dramatically improve the Hawks' defense. The question is how much it would affect their offense. Removing an offensive engine that generates 25 points and 10 assists a game is a big change, but there is an argument that Dejounte Murray could absorb much of Young's offensive primacy with the rest spread among their complementary creators and that it might actually lead to a healthier offensive ecosystem and similar efficiency. The problem is, that Young is so ball-dominant that it's hard to actually test that hypothesis in any meaningful way with the roster as is.
That leaves a few possibilities for the Hawks. They can keep pushing forward and hope Young's shooting percentages and shot selection rebound to where they were in 2021-22, his best offensive season. They can also just stay the course and hope they can improve enough on defense to make it work even if he continues to shoot this terribly. (I mean, the 76ers did make the Finals with Allen Iverson and this formula, albeit with a better defense and less supporting talent on offense).
Or they can trade Young, not really knowing what will happen but with the knowledge that the status quo isn't where they want to be.
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The season of Tyrese Maxey
Tyrese Maxey has given the Philadelphia 76ers everything they could have hoped for this season, filling the gap left by James Harden and then some. Maxey went off for 50 against the Pacers on Sunday, helping push the 76ers to 8-1, the best record in the NBA. And in case you forgot, their only loss came in their season opener, by one point to the Bucks, meaning they're on an eight-game winning streak.
Maxey is averaging 28.6 points, 7.2 assists, 5.4 rebounds, 1.0 steals and 1.0 blocks per game, with a 63.3 true shooting percentage. He's helping Joel Embiid be the best version of himself, playing top-notch defense and working as an impeccably efficient offensive engine. Below, you'll see a link to his case for Most Improved Player. But if he keeps playing like this, he's going to find himself in the MVP conversation to.
READ MORE:
- Tyrese Maxey is an early candidate for Most Improved Player by Lucas Johnson, for The Sixer Sense
- On the Tyrese Maxey-Joel Embiid duo, the Ben Simmons comeback and more: NBA notebook
by Mike Vorkunov, for The Athletic - On Tyrese Maxey's 50-point night and how he 'changes everything' for Sixers by Paul Hudrick, for Liberty Ballers
QUICK HITTER: NBA In-Season Tournament Standings
There are a bunch of strange things about the inaugural NBA In-Season that have made it hard to follow and be invested in, not the least of which is just the newness of the entire enterprise and the unfamiliarity of the format. But the schedule isn't doing the NBA any favors either.
The Tournament began 10 days ago on Nov. 3 and if the group play round ended today, the Celtics, 76ers, Hornets and Heat would all advance to the quarterfinals from the East. In the West, the Nuggets, Timberwolves, Jazz and Kings would be in.
The problem with that is all eight of those teams are just 1-0 in group play. They are separate from the other six teams who are also 1-0 by point differential. Just five teams have played two of their four group-stage games yet, and three teams — the Hawks, Raptors and Magic — haven't even played any of their group-stage games yet and won't until tomorrow night.
There are plenty of levers that can be pulled to make this whole thing work better next year and balancing the schedule should be near the top of the list. The whole group stage only lasts 25 days. Nearly half of that window has passed and three teams haven't even started their tournament schedule yet and the standings are essentially meaningless for everyone else because most teams have only played one game.
It's complicated fitting this into the regular season schedule and the league doesn't want to tax the players physically. But they've also set up a scenario where there's no real incentive for anyone to engage with the product yet, other than the unique eye-sore courts they've rolled out.
Recommended Reading:
1. The Pacers' defensive weak-link is stepping up: "So, in one seven-minute stretch, he stripped the ball from Giannis (twice!), he stayed in front of and rotated to Middleton, and he boxed-out Lopez. Some of the lapses he can demonstrate away from the ball weren't readily tested, as far as his tendency to have a strong initial thrust and relax, nor was his ability to impact passes to the roll-man after switching, but he manufactured critical stops even as he was also manufacturing points, very notably as organically as ever, at the other end." Bennedict Mathurin is stepping into his power
2. The center who didn't want to be a center: "But, unless Davis can help indoctrinate the two free agent acquisitions to the point Lakers coach Darvin Ham trusts them at center, he could end up back at the 5 again, a position he has pushed back against since his very first day with the Lakers." Inside Anthony Davis and the Lakers' vision for their latest big-man trio
3. In Tyrese We Trust: "Even the production crew for the Pacers' local broadcast had to figure out how to keep up. There was no time anymore for "hero shots" of an opposing scorer after a made basket; Haliburton was grabbing the ball out of the referee's hands to fire passes upcourt, and his teammates were launching shots faster than the broadcast could cut back to the action. So many Pacers were sprinting up the floor and off the screen that the camera operators had to change the way they framed the break—starting wider and then easing in closer, as if they were shooting the start of a down at the Colts' Lucas Oil Stadium." With Tyrese Haliburton, All Things Are Possible
