Trae Young
Trae Young was easily the main reason to watch the Atlanta Hawks this season, and though he struggled early on in the season, he vastly improved month-over-month to the point that he was pushing Luka Doncic in the Rookie of the Year race quite hard.
Really, both players should be named Co-Rookies of the Year, but a much more Doncic-focused voting cadre will likely make an incorrect choice.
Still though, Ice Trae produced an avalanche of amazing games for the Hawks this year – including 7 of the team’s top 15 games according to Basketball Reference’s game score metric and 15 overall that scored above a 20 game score.
One of his games outshone the rest, however, by a considerable margin – producing a team-high 37.8 game score, which also happened to land him in the top 50 of any player this season in single game score.
I’m speaking, of course, of his astonishing display in the Atlanta Hawks quadruple-overtime thriller against the Chicago Bulls. Though his late-game heroics were sadly denied by a wily foul on a three-point shooting Otto Porter, Young was still immensely clutch in that game and he produced one of the most memorable stat lines ever by an NBA rookie: 49 points, 16 assists and 8 rebounds in a whopping 56 minutes.
We have previously explored 8 crazy stats from that game, but Young’s performance was easily the most memorable of any Hawks player this season. Despite Young hitting numerous game-winners throughout the year (giving Damian Lillard a run for his money), the quadruple-overtime Hawks loss to the Bulls will forever live on in Atlanta Hawks lore.
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