Atlanta Hawks: Trae Young is the Offensive Fulcrum Atlanta Needs

A statistical deep dive on the Atlanta Hawks rookie point guard Trae Young.

When the Atlanta Hawks traded down to obtain Trae Young out of Oklahoma, many basketball pundits lauded Dallas’s move to ascend the draft board to obtain Slovenian wunderkind Luka Doncic – giving up a future first round pick in the process.

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So far, that move has certainly paid dividends for the Mavs as Doncic – as well as a sturdy supporting cast – has Dallas in vague playoff contention in the stacked Western Conference. Beyond that, Doncic has captured the imaginations of writers, bloggers, viewers and NBA fans worldwide as he is hot on the heels of LeBron James in terms of All-Star votes.

However, though Doncic has certainly lived up to the hype, the Atlanta Hawks side of the equation has also been fairly favorable. The team’s bet on Young on draft night has certainly not brought the lavish attention to Atlanta that Doncic has brought to Dallas, but perhaps that’s for the better.

Young is still having a strong season that should have him in All-Rookie First Team consideration, and his stats bear out the impact he is having on the team in a variety of ways.

Though Ice Trae’s numbers aren’t quite up to the near Player of the Year territory he produced in his lone college season at Oklahoma, he is still producing excellent offensive numbers that are good enough to make it clear that Young is the offensive fulcrum that the Hawks were looking for when they drafted him at #5 overall.

Let’s explore a a myriad of his statistics.

Pace/Drives to Rim

According to Basketball Reference, the Atlanta Hawks are currently playing at a breakneck pace that leads the league – an average of 104.3 possessions per 48 minutes.

Much of that speed comes from the swift decision-making and underrated speed of Young. Though former Hawks point guard Dennis Schröder was renowned for his straight line drives and incredible top speed, if you actually watched him play, he did not really bring the ball up all that quickly or make the offensive move crisply through sets.

Young is the exact opposite. NBA.com claims that Young’s average speed overall is 4.42 MPH in a given game, which is 8th among all players that are logging at least 29 minutes a game. However, his average speed on the offensive end is even higher at 5.02 MPH – behind only catch-and-shoot specialists Buddy Hield and Joe Harris, who get a lot of their offensive via off-ball movement.

That is not the case with Trae, as almost all of his movement comes via driving the ball into the paint – surrounded by a sea of slinky defenders.

Ice Trae is 4th in the NBA among qualified players in drives per game at 16.8, and he trails only notable rim attackers James Harden, DeMar Derozan and Russell Westbrook (whose team Trae and the Hawks recently dispatched with panache). Among those players, Trae has some of the best passing numbers.

Passing

Returning back to that list of the top 4 in drives per game, Young is producing some of the most sparkling passing numbers of those 4 elite-level talents.

Out of his 16.8 drives per game, Young is passing 7.5 times per game, which ranks 3rd behind Westbrook and Derozan. Young’s pass percentage of 44.3 percent is second only to Westbrook’s sky-high 49.6 percent among the league leaders in drives per game. Young’s assist percentage of 13.4 percent off drives to the rim also only trails Westbrook’s 14.1 percent.

Overall, Young’s raw assist numbers on the year are staggering – especially for a rookie point guard. The Atlanta Hawks first-year player is currently 8th in the league in total assists with 318, 10th in the league in assists per game with 7.2 and 9th in the league in assist rate at 37.2 percent. That’s not too shabby for a rookie point guard through the first 40+ games of his NBA career.

Beyond that, according to Inpredictable, Young’s Assist Win Probability Added of 8.97 is 9th in the league behind only luminaries such as Westbrook, Harden, Ben Simmons, Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant.

Young’s passing, at this point, is the clear focal point of the Atlanta Hawks offense, and the team’s offensive rating improves by 1.3 points per 100 possessions when he is on the court, which is the third-highest jump on the team behind only John Collins and Kevin Huerter.

Overall Impact

Clearly, Young is zooming past defenders to get to the rim and is frequently passing to open shooters on the perimeter. Also, he is often getting fouled. Though he trails Harden, DeRozan and Westbrook in free throw attempts per game via drives, that’s no surprise; those three players are among the best in the league at getting to the foul line.

Young is still in the top 20 in terms of the free throw attempts per game off drives (1.7 per game), but he is shooting a higher percentage (86.5%) than any of those three foul-drawing experts. Ice Trae gains confidence by grooving past defenders into the paint, then doesn’t mind absorbing contact in order to draw the foul.

In terms of catch-all metrics, Trae Young is providing Atlanta Hawks fans something to be excited about for the future, especially combined with JC and Red Pepper as well as the superfluity of draft picks the team will have going forward.

According to ESPN’s Real Plus/Minus, which usually makes rookie point guards look like utter trash, Ice Trae is Top 40 in offensive RPM with a 0.13 (though he is third-to-last in total RPM due to his truly abysmal defensive numbers… but that’s not what this piece is about!). While that number is not great, the RPM metric is colored considerably by the teammates a player is surrounded by.

BBall Index’s Player Impact Plus/Minus removes that caveat and Young’s performance according to that metric increases dramatically. Trae is 4th on the Atlanta Hawks in terms of offensive PIPM at -0.3, which is behind only Collins, Jeremy Lin and Huerter among qualified Hawks.

Shooting

I hate to end on a down note, but Trae Young’s shooting must be discussed in any conversation about his future with the team.

Young was drafted with the stunningly hyperbolic idea that he would be the next Stephen Curry. Clearly, that’s an over-the-top and impossible-to-live-up-to comparison, as Young’s stellar passing and terrific feel more accurately resembles a player like Steve Nash or Jason Kidd rather than the greatest shooter to every play in Curry.

While Young’s overall raw numbers look quite ugly on the year (39.7 percent shooting from the field and 29.5 percent shooting from long range), it must be noted that his numbers are on an uptick over the past month.

Ice Trae is visibly more comfortable taking shots from long range of late, and the numbers bear it out: Since December 16, Young is shooting 42.3 percent from three-point territory on 4.4 attempts per game. Though Curry is taking 9 more triple a game than Trae at 13.7 per game over that span, he is shooting 43.7 percent from long-range. Maybe they’re not so different after all?

Lastly, the degree of difficulty on these shots is fairly spectacular, as noted by a Tweet from statistician Bo Schwartz:

As you can see, Young leads the league in pulling up from the logo, and his shot has been falling from that distance of late.

If Trae Young can keep up his recent successes at pushing the pace, driving to the rim and pulling up from long range, the Atlanta Hawks will benefit in the long-term. Even if the shot never comes full circle, the Atlanta Hawks still have a threatening force at the point guard position, which is always important in the NBA.

Statistics courtesy of Inpredictable, BBall Index, ESPN, Basketball Reference and NBA.com; current as of 1-18-19.