Atlanta Hawks: Trae Young & Luka Doncic Should Be Co-Rookies of the Year

Trae Young #11 and Luka Doncic #77 Atlanta Hawks (Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images)
Trae Young #11 and Luka Doncic #77 Atlanta Hawks (Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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Luka Doncic #77 of the Dallas Mavericks Trae Young #11 of the Atlanta Hawks (Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Shooting Stats for Both Players

Early in the season, the main argument against having Trae Young as a Rookie of the Year contender was his terrible three-point shooting. However, don’t look now, but Luka is actually shooting a worse percentage from downtown than Trae Young – over the course of the entire season.

Doncic sits at 33.3 percent from deep on the season while Trae is shooting 33.6 percent from beyond the arc this year.

Sure, the difference is minuscule and could change before tonight’s slate of games is finished, but still, if the entire argument around why Doncic is better than Trae was the three-point shooting disparity, that argument is now, frankly, obsolete.

Since the start of 2019, the difference is even more stark: Trae Young is shooting an impressive 38.1 percent on 6.5 attempts per game from long-range while Luka Doncic is only shooting 29.9 percent from downtown on 8 attempts per game per NBA.com.

Free throw shooting also tilts the scales in favor of Trae Young both for the season (82.1% for Young, 70.1% for Doncic) and even more drastically since January 1 (84.6% for Young, 65.7% for Doncic).

Digging even further into raw field goal percentage, Trae is hot on Luka’s heels for the season (41.7% for Young, 42.6% for Doncic) as well as in the widely admired true shooting percentage metric (53.9% for Young, 54.4% for Doncic).

Lastly, since January 1, Young is shooting better than Doncic from the field overall – 43.4 percent versus 41.7 percent.