Superstar point guard Trae Young absolutely loves to play at Madison Garden if his play in the Atlanta Hawks (36-36) 117-111 win over the New York Knicks is any indication. While most of the attention will rightfully go there, including here in just a bit., this was a big team victory. The Hawks were coming off of a disappointing loss and had yet to beat the Knicks.
That 0-3 record coming in must have sparked something because the Hawks looked like a different team right at the outset.
Four first-quarter turnovers threatened to spoil the evening as they let the Knicks close the frame up 34-30. Things got even bleaker out of the break with the Hawks coughing the ball up six more times.
Luckily, Young had as steady of a performance as we have seen.
The Atlanta Hawks got a show with their win courtesy of Trae Young
He’s scored more points and dished out more assists – he’s certainly hauled in more rebounds than the one that he finished Tuesday’s contest with. But it was obvious that Young would be the determining factor in this game. That was true even as RJ Barrett was racking up 26 points through three quarters.
Young had 38 points by then and, though he only scored seven more points in the fourth quarter, there were none bigger on the night.
The first quarter was rough.
Getting his 11 points took work as he went 3-of-8 from the floor and 1–of-4 from beyond the arc. Young also had two turnovers surely sparking flashbacks of Monday’s loss where the Hawks turned the rock over nine times as a team with Young owning five by himself.
After starting the fourth quarter with Young on the bench, Nate McMillan kept him there for what felt like an eternity as the deficit grew from four points to 10 points in less than two minutes.
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Young returned to the game following a Danilo Gallinari three to dish out a couple more assists and hit a three to tie the game one last time at 105-all.
He took ownership of those previous mistakes and he took ownership of his game after the first 12 minutes. From that point on, he shot 58.8 percent from the floor and hit 6-of-11 triples. Let us also not forget that he went 12-of-14 at the free-throw line giving him double-digit attempts in four of his last six games.
In his last four games at historic Madison Square Garden, Young is averaging 32.5 points on 45.5 percent shooting from the floor with 16-of-38 threes going down including Tuesday.
And we all remember his performance in the first round of last year’s playoffs.
Young averaged 29.2 points and 9.8 assists while dispatching the Knicks in five games. He averaged 32.5 points on 45.1 percent shooting on the Garden floor. A villain in the Big Apple, Young noted that the crowd was not as loud as it was during the playoffs after telling a fan to hold the L.
He added later that this was the kind of effort the Hawks need to have consistently going forward to give themselves a shot.
The win gets the Hawks back to .500 and another shot at getting above that mark for the first time since mid-December with a win on Wednesday against Detroit Pistons. As Young said, they will give themselves a good chance to win if they do in fact repeat Tuesday’s effort.