Atlanta Hawks: 3 Goals for Trae Young in 2018-19

As we move ever closer to the preseason, let’s take a look at the goals for each player on the Atlanta Hawks as we head into the 2018-19 regular season.

After playing like a bonafide star as a freshman at Oklahoma, Trae Young entered his Atlanta Hawks career with everyone watching. The pressure of being under such a microscope was too much for Young in his first run at Summer League in Utah. Just 12 of his 52 field goal attempts were makes, and the criticism was flying in from nearly every direction for Ice Trae.

He made up for it a bit in Las Vegas, as Young racked up 17 points and nearly 7 assists in 25.8 minutes per game. Even after his improved play in Sin City, Young has a lot to prove. The fifth overall pick will have everyone who watched him evolve into a college basketball hero tuned into his every move at the NBA level.

While it likely will be more of a slow, steady pace rather than a complete bursting onto the stage, Young will have ample time to show his talent on this level. Here, we’ve laid out some goals he can look to attain as a rookie for the Atlanta Hawks that will put him on the right track for a nice career.

Goal 1: Be the Best Rookie Shooter

In the yearly Rookie Survey, Trae Young was voted the best shooter by his fellow rookie classmates. The goal here is simple: prove them right.

Trae lead the nation in points per game last season, scoring 27.4 on 42% shooting. His production from behind the line dwindled a bit as the season wore on, but he still ended the year with an impressive 36% of his attempted 328 threes dropping.

Trae takes the quantity over quality approach with his game, and only one player took more field goal attempts in college basketball last year. Although his leash beyond the three-point line will likely will be tighter in the NBA, he seems to always have a green light to shoot well behind the line, which has drawn many comparisons to Stephen Curry.

Young is lucky to not garner much competition from other rookies. Fellow Atlanta Hawks draftee Kevin Huerter tied the Lakers’ Svi Mykhailiuk for the second-most votes. While Huerter might actually be the better true shooter, Trae’s shot-creation ability is unmatched.

If his shots drop around at around the same clip he hit in college, and he’s able to control his urge to shoot from near mid-court, he should be able to reach this goal.

Goal 2: Confirm Elite Passing Ability

While everyone is glowing over the potential of Young as a premier scorer, it’s easy to forget Young led the NCAA in assists per game last year as well. Unlike his shooting, Young’s passing translated nicely into Summer League:

He doesn’t really have a go-to pass, which is a compliment to his passing capabilities. Since he’s such a threat as a perimeter shooter, he’s often able to get a defender to fly past him on a fake, allowing him to deliver a drive-and-kick dime. 

He has the tools to be a elite passer down the road in the pros, and here we’re asking him to accelerate that process. Rookie point guards often have trouble adjusting to the faster speed of NBA defenders, and Young will be no exception.

It’s hard to put a metric on passing that truly measures someone as an elite-level passer, but a good first step would be cutting down on the turnovers. If he’s able to do that while adjusting to the improved defensive sets from what he saw at Oklahoma, we could see Trae become a phenomenal passer for the Atlanta Hawks — and one of the best passers in the NBA, period.

Goal 3: Keep That Same (Defensive) Energy

Young (and good friend Michael Porter) has found a motto to brush off the naysayers: “Keep that same energy.”

On the court, let’s hope we see him keep the same energy he had on the defensive side in Summer League.

Young was never seen as a defensive liability at Oklahoma, but he wasn’t exactly a stud either. His 6-2, 180 frame places him among the smallest of NBA players and he’ll have trouble on D for most of his career. The hope is that he plays so well on the other side of the ball we’ll forget all about the lackluster defense.

The bright side is his energy level on defense is consistently high. He was some call a “hustle player” in Summer League, and while he wasn’t racking up steals or blocks, he was trying his best to stay in front of his man. It was a nice sight, especially because he had a really rough start offensively, and it would have been easy to hang his head and give up on D.

Instead he turned that into a positive and tried to make up for it, and you have to at least admire that.

The NBA schedule is awfully long, and it might prove too hard for Young to keep that defensive energy for all 82 games, especially being out from under the microscope that is Summer League.

No one is expecting him to be a fundamentally great defensive star, but if he’s able to keep the high motor running during the entire season, he can be more than passable (pun intended).