Atlanta Hawks: Trae Young Awarded Belated Player of the Week Honors

A quick recap of the recent Player of the Week honors for Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks.

At long last, Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks was given an Eastern Conference Player of the Week award. Despite posting a ridiculous week-long stretch to start this month in which he averaged well over 30 points – including a striking 49-point performance against the Bulls in quadruple-overtime, for some reason the NBA gave that week’s award to Ben Simmons, who averaged around 16 points per game that week…? Seems a bit off.

Either way, perhaps the NBA was swayed by Trae’s recent clutch exploits, such as his game-winner against the Philadelphia 76ers or his almost-game winner against those same Bulls.

Trae Young is already one of the best passers in the NBA as well as the best rookie in Atlanta Hawks franchise history, so adding another superlative to his cabinet such as being one of the most clutch players in the NBA is fitting for the 20-year-old rookie.

Notably, Trae winning this award means he is the only rookie this season to be bestowed with such an honor. Going a bit further, he’s the only rookie over the past four seasons to be named a Player of the Week, joining only Karl-Anthony Towns in the final week of the 2015-16 season and Ben Simmons in the final week of last season. Interestingly, Young won the award in the second-to-last week of March, meaning he won it earlier than either of those two rookies.

It seems that Trae being named POW this week instead of earlier this month when his stats were better is something of a “make-up call” for the NBA. In a week in which D’Angelo Russell of the Brooklyn Nets notched over 30 points a game and scored 27 points in a single quarter during a 4th-quarter comeback seems like an oversight.

But hey, our guy won it, so everything’s fine!