The Hawks Might Have a Trae Young PROBLEM

The Hawks Might Have a Trae Young PROBLEM

Yo, what’s going on y’all? It’s Con and the Hawks may have a little bit of a Trey Young problem brewing over there in Atlanta. There was already some drama surrounding him and the Hawks coming into the season when the two sides did not agree to an extension. And we heard from a number of sources that there was a chance that this was going to be the last season with Trey in Atlanta, but they brought in like Porzingis and kill Alexander Walker and it felt like this could be a great season for him to go ahead and prove his worth to the franchise for the Hawks to be really good. A lot of people, me included, thought they could make a conference finals run if things really broke their way. And then the season started off and they looked really bad. They were 1 and three to start the year. Did not look that great on either end of the ball. And then in a game against the Brooklyn Nets, the fifth game of the season, Trey Young goes down. And including that game, and ever since, the Hawks have been one of the best teams in the league. They are 8-2 without Trey Young in the lineup this season. They’ve now won five straight. That’s tied for the third longest streak in the league. and they’re nine and five, tied with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third best record in the Eastern Conference. And that culminated tonight with a comeback win of 22 points against the Phoenix Suns, who have been really good this season. They outscored them 47 to 27 in the fourth quarter to win. They were incredibly dominant and the way the Hawks have been doing things really majority of the season at this point. Incredible ball movement. Everybody is swinging to the open man. They’re getting downhill and kicking out. uh they’re making the right decision. Uh Jaylen Johnson has become a monster at the point forward with 22 9.6 6.3 assists and almost two steals a night while shooting almost 60% from the field and 38% from three. We want to talk allstar all-star locks. As of right now, and I feel pretty confident in saying for the rest of the time until the selections are made, Jaylen Johnson is an all-star lock. He will be on his first team this season and this is going to become a regular thing. He is a monster. Whether it’s his increasing vision, his playmaking has become legitimately really good at this point. He’s unstoppable in transition when he gets ahead of team. There’s nobody staying in front of him. Uh he’s also just really smart with the basketball. He kind of knows exactly where to be. Jaylen Johnson is incredible player. Also a good defender. He does everything. He is the exact Swiss Army knife type of Ford that you’d want on your team. And whether it’s him doing that type of stuff or Dyson Daniels who’s been shooting poorly this season, but is playmaking his butt off tonight. He had 11 points, seven rebounds to go with his 12 dimes, uh, three steals in there as well. It’s the typical Dyson Daniel stuff where he’s playing elite defense. He’s playmaking at a really high level. And the efficiency has not really been there. He’s not hitting the three-point shot, but because other guys are picking him up on that offensive end, it is working. Uh, but especially when it comes to playmaking, Dyson’s become a bonafide, really solid guy to be giving the ball to at that point guard spot in order to go ahead and create plays, especially when you give him again a point4 like Jaylen Johnson. You’ve got Nikil Alexander Walker playing amazing right now. He had 16 points in the fourth quarter for the Hawks. And he’s currently dropping 18 points, three rebounds, three and a half assists, 1.1 steals for them a night. I picked him to be my sixman of the year. I mean, he’s doing this while starting right now, but when he goes back to the bench at some point when Trey Young returns, if he keeps this up, he can still push his name into that conversation. You’ve got V Craig who’s knocking down threes at a ridiculous clip. He’s shooting over 50% and he was the big reason why they beat the Los Angeles Clippers recently. So many guys are stepping up. Porzingis has been in and out of the lineup and hasn’t been that great so far. So, Kungwu has just went ahead and taken a leap. Uh he’s averaging 15.7 points. That’s a careerhigh shooting a careerhigh 38.7% from three and had 32 points while hitting eight threes against the Jazz last game and tonight 27 4 5 2 and two with three threes. He’s been one of the better bigs in the sport as of late. And it’s not just these guys. It’s Zachary Reach who got injured leaving this game, but after a really slow start to the season, he’s starting to pick it up. Luke Canard has been the absolute sniper that he’s always been. Moay is one of the most underrated defenders in the sport. He’s been a big lynch pin and why this team has been defending so well. You’ve even got guys like Asa Newle or Katon Wallace giving them good minutes here and there. This has just proven to be a pretty deep team. Uh Quincider has everybody playing really well above the the level that you might expect from this Hawk squad without Trey Young to the point where like if you take a look at the stats, they’ve just been one of the best teams in the league since Trey went down. 11th best offense, fourth best defense, second best assist percentage with the most assists per game. You would think with Trey Young out of the lineup that’s a number that’s going to dip, but they’re just moving the ball so well. Everybody is making the right decisions. They’re really buying into this team identity that it hasn’t really mattered that they haven’t had one of the better playmaking guards in the league to lead them as of late. Uh they’ve been the eighth best shooting team at 37.8% from three and the fourth best field goal percentage outright. They have been really good in basically every area of basketball over their last 10 games, which again so happens to coincide with when Trey Young left the lineup. And this has brought up a lot of conversations online. People talking about, are the Hawks worst with Trey Young? Does this mean that they should go ahead and deal him away and trying to buy more into the system that they’ve started to cultivate here when Trey Young comes back? Is he going to disrupt this? And I’m going to be honest, I don’t know what the answer is. Trey is such a good player that I find it really hard to believe that this team isn’t going to be better when Trey Young returns. My mindset for the most part is that when Trey Young comes back with the Hawks playing the level that they are right now, they’re only going to accelerate further and that they may end up being the team I expected them to be this season, which again I thought was a potential conference finals team. like I think they have that ability, they have that outcome on their radar and that Trey Young playing at his best makes them more likely to reach that type of ceiling. That is my my stance if you’re wondering what it is. But there are also some stats that make you think and pause a little bit and you have to imagine make the Hawks front office pause a little bit because again they didn’t extend him. They clearly came into the season being like, “Okay, we’re going to see how this goes.” And right now they’re winning. If Trayon comes back and even if it’s not his fault, but they start losing, you have to imagine, regardless of, I guess, what they’re doing, they’ve now seen that they can do this without Trey, they’re going to take in some offers. But especially if they start to slip when he returns to the lineup, you would have to imagine that Trey Young rumors are going to really start circulating and that the Hawks front office is going to be like, “Maybe we just go ahead and deal him. Maybe we don’t bring him back. maybe that this is the direction we need to go ahead and go because clearly they’re already not super convinced that he’s worth the money that he’s asking for. There are some numbers that could support that claim. In the five games that Trey played in, they were a minus 8.6 with him out there and a negative four with him off the court. Uh the defense specifically got 15.2 points better in defensive rating. That is a massive, massive swing. And on the full season, the Hawks and Trey Young’s minutes have an offensive rating of 116.6, six, which is the exact same number as in the minutes without him this season. But the defense goes from the worst in the league to the fourth best. And the trade-off with Trey is usually that you get better offense with a defensive drop off. That’s always been the challenges. Trey is going to give you at least a serviceable offense. And if you give him the right pieces, a really good offense, but defensively, you got to find the right pieces to make it work. And my thought process was, okay, well, you have Tyson Daniels, you’ve got Reach, Jaylen Johnson, Porzingis comes in, now Yaka Kungu, Nikil Alexander Walker. You bring in all these really solid defenders to support Trey that also have offensive upside and now you build out the best Hawks team of Trey Young’s tenure. And I do still think that that is the way it’s probably going to go when Trey comes back. That again is my mindset. Don’t take this video as me saying that the Hawks are going to suck when Trey comes back or that they have to get rid of him. That is not it. But I’m just presenting that there is this conundrum that exists right now, especially when you consider the preseason narrative. Like if the offense is fine without him and the defense is terrible with him on, then you have to wonder, does he muck this thing up a little bit? When he comes back, he’s not a particularly good offball player. And most of the time you’ve needed him to play off ball because it’s Trey Young. You don’t really want him sitting in the corner. And ultimately having the ball in his hands is better than not most times. But with how they’re flowing, how they’re playing right now, I don’t think you can disrupt this fully. Trey has to buy into being a better offball player. He has to. You’re not going to win a championship with Trey Young as your best player with him being on ball all the time. He’s just not that caliber of player. Not that Trey is bad. Don’t take that as me saying Trey is bad. I’ve been a Trey Young defender for a while now, but he’s not up to that like superstar level where it’s like, okay, he’s so good, we cannot ever have the ball out of his hands. Trey’s just always been someone that like when they tried the DeJonte Murray thing, not that I like that. I mean, I’d much rather have the ball in Trey’s hands than DeJonte Murray’s, but there’ll be times where he’s playing off ball and he’s kind of just standing at half court doing nothing. He’s got to buy in. He’s got to be better. And I’m hopeful that he can be because he sees the way they’re playing right now. The vibes are high and he’s kind of got to if he wants to stick with this team because again, if they start struggling, I think he’s one of the first guys that’s looked at to be moved. All in all, it’s just a really fascinating situation. the numbers would tell you they’re better without Trey, but just thinking about it, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around that completely. Like, I know he’s a big negative defensively, and really, I think the key to them being better with Trey is for him just to be better like shooting the basketball because if he’s shooting as poorly as he was to start the season the whole year, then yeah, I I do think that they’re just better off without Trey Young at that point. But I I refuse to believe that he’s just going to be horrific offensively the entire year, especially now with more weapons. I think there is a world where Trey comes back. He’s looking efficient. This team has the defenders, the weapons to go ahead and elevate him and he elevates them and then just suddenly this is not just at the moment over 10 games one of the best teams in the East, but flat out for the rest of the season. Two more things I do want to note real quick on the the side of the numbers that don’t support Trey Young. Uh it was just the beginning of the season and like the Hawks shot really poorly to start the year. Also, you’ve got a lot of new moving pieces with Jaylen Johnson who didn’t play a majority of last season now coming in and you’ve got Porzingis and N Alexander Walker is new to this whole thing and Trey is kind of notorious for cold starts the year sometimes. Uh you’ve also got the fact that they haven’t played the hardest schedule without Trey Young. But at the same time, I guess also they have a net rating of 8.3. So, it’s not like they’re barely scraping by bad teams. They’re beating up on everybody for the most part. And especially like this Suns team has just been good this season. to make that comeback is a huge testament to what they could do. Like in the fourth quarter, they were able to put together consistent really good fluid offense and typically you think that’s like the main thing they’d struggle with without Trey and they haven’t been a great fourth quarter team. So yeah, I do think that’s playing into it, but like this is a circumstance where they’ve shown it’s ca it’s possible there. There are a lot of moving parts here. This is why I’m calling it I think this video is called the Trey Young problem because it’s not something I think that is easily solvable or we can just know what the answer is right now. And I think ultimately when he comes back, those first like 10 to 20 games when he returns up until the deadline basically, it’s going to be really telling. That is the portion that will decide is Trey Young and Atlanta Hawk or is he gone? Maybe like they just let him walk or it’s a signing trade. I don’t know. And maybe it turns out that the playoffs are actually the portion of the year that ultimately decides whether he stays or goes. And I think it could really go either way. I think it’s 50/50 on whether he’s a Hawk going forward or he’s gone. and this play right now that the Hawks are showcasing, like they’ve been so so good, I think makes things a lot more interesting. So, those are my thoughts on the situation. Let me know down below in the comments uh what your takeaways have been from Atlanta, how you feel about this. Let’s go ahead and quickly go over the rest of the games because I went longer on that than I meant to. Uh the Houston Rockets get a win over the Orlando Magic 117 to 113. Uh the Magic, shout out to them. They fought really hard in this one. They were up without Palabo. This would have been a massive win, but they just barely fall short against one of the best teams in the NBA on the road. It’s not surprising. I mean, a Rockets video is overdue, but the story is Alurn Shenun and Kevin Durant in the clutch. They were just unstoppable. It was KD isoing getting you bucket after bucket. It was getting the ball to Shenun and letting him work out of the post. Uh the rebounding of course was a massive advantage towards Houston. This is just a really good team. I’ve been super impressed with their offense. I really thought it was going to be like a defensive team that still kind of struggles on offense, but instead they’ve just been this offensive juggernaut. And it’s really really cool to see those two become one of the best duos in the league, especially when it comes to the end of games. We saw the Mavericks knock off the Blazers 138 to 133. Cooper Flag is playing really well right now, 218 and five in this game to go with one steal and two blocks, 56% shooting. Uh Coop’s amazing and he’s been really good and it kind of coincides this great stretch we’re seeing from him with them putting a point guard in the lineup more frequently. Who would have guessed that forcing Cooper Flag to play out of position point guard never really made sense? It’s almost like I said that to before the season and to open the year and here we are and it’s going ahead and working. Uh but for the Blazers just like the last possession of regulation, Denny Abdia literally just waits out the entire shot clock and then shoots like the worst sideep three you’ve ever seen. Uh and the defense for this team it’s been slipping. Like it’s not been as good as I was hoping. I’ve been kind of disappointed a little bit with um Tumani Kamara throughout part of this season. Perimeter wise, he still feels fine, but it feels like he’s not doing as well when he gets inside the ark. And Donovan Klingan hasn’t been the elite rim protector quite the way that I was hoping he was going to be this year. I don’t know. I’ve been a little bit underwhelmed as of late, and they’ve fallen below 500. Like, they’ve lost the Mavericks, but are also the only team that’s beaten Denver and Oklahoma City. They’re a weird team. The Jazz knocked off the Bulls in double overtime 150 to 147. Lowry Markin with 47 having a monster bounceback season. Keonte George the breakout continues. 33 points with six dimes and four steals, hitting the game-winning three for Utah. Uh the Jazz have just looked decent. Like they’ve been solid. I think they’re five and seven now at this point, which is a lot better than I would have expected. Five wins. It took them until mid December, I think, to get that last year. And for the Bulls, uh 26, 13 and 13 from Josh Giddy. Kobe White had 27 in his return game and ultimately I thought played pretty well in 30 minutes. It’s a lot to play coming off, you know, not playing at all this season. and Madas had 18, but they just couldn’t stop anything. And I think we’re really starting to see the Bulls come back down to earth after the hot start they had to the season. The Nets beat the Wizards 129 to 106 in the toilet bowl. The Nets now have two wins while the Wizards still have one. Michael Porter Jr.’s been playing really well. This was kind of a fun game to actually watch a little bit. I was tuned into this one. Tyrese Martin had 20. Uh for the Wizards, just a little bit disappointed in them. Like I know they want to lose. Like obviously they want to get one of the top guys in this year’s draft, but I just expected a little bit better. I thought they’d be somewhat competitive this season with when you have like CJ McCollum and Chris Middleton and I thought they had a decent young core and I do still think they do, but like it’s just I don’t know. They they’ve just been underwhelming. I’m not seeing the progress. Like even though they’re losing, it just feels like there aren’t as many flashes as I might want to see from some of these guys. But like Keshan George did at 296 and five, he’s been um up there with Alexar as the most impressive Wizards on the season. The Warriors bled the Pelicans 124 to 106. Not a lot to really talk about there. The Pelicans continued to spiral, but Moses Moody had 32. Shout out to him. The Celtics knocked off the Clippers. James Hard did everything he could to make this a game. It felt like it was over three different times and Hard just kept hitting step back three after step back three after pullup three to keep them in this game. He finished with 377 and eight, but ultimately it wasn’t enough. Celtics Jaylen Brown 33 and 13, 30 from Peyton Pritchard, 22 from Derrick White with nine assists. One of his better games of the season. Uh yeah, I mean this Clippers defense just continues to be unable to get stops and they are falling further and further below 500. That that chance of them giving the Thunder a really good pick in this year’s draft with the pick swap is rising. And then I think this is the final game. The Spurs knock off the Kings 123 to 110. Sacramento, they’re just absolutely abysmal. They’re awful. There was no Victor Webinama in this game. Didn’t matter. Kings really never looked like they had a chance. 28 points and 11 assists from Dearan Fox, 20 from Harrison Barnes, 16 from Deon Vel, 12 from Shan Penny, 14 from Kell Johnson, 11 from Sohan. It shot 54% from the field and 37% from three. And again, put up 123 without Victor Webyama. Like I I mean like come on, if you’re the Sacramento Kings, this is maybe the lowest point you’ve had all season. And guess what? They’ve got the Oklahoma City Thunder in two days for the third time this season. That’s that’s brutal to give the Kings us three times to start off their season. That is it’s kind of unfair. But yeah, those are my thoughts on the games from today. Kings video is probably coming soon about them being terrible. Probably after that Thunder loss on Wednesday, most likely. But that’s all I’ve got for the games today. Again, want to hear your thoughts on the Trey Young situation. Do you think they should trade him? Do you think they should wait it out? Do you think they will be better or worse when he returns? Leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed. Let me know any other takeaways you have from the uh the games today. Uh and yeah, I appreciate you watching. I’ll see youall later. Ray one, say it back.

The Atlanta Hawks are playing great basketball right now despite Trae Young being out and just knocked off the Phoenix Suns in a huge comeback headlined by Jalen Johnson, Onyeka Okongwu, Dyson Daniels, Zaccharie Risahcer, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. They were expected to compete with the Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, and others in the East, but not without Trae and now there are questions about if Trae Young is even necessary. Could it be time for a Trae Young trade?

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0:00 – Intro
0:45 – The Hawks are on FIRE
1:23 – Jalen Johnson is an All Star
2:14 – Dyson Daniels, Okongwu, and NAW
3:22 – This team is DEEP and COOKING
5:02 – Are the Hawks better without Trae Young?
8:57 – Is a Trae trade coming?
11:24 – The rest of the NBA
16:06 – Outro