Celtics fan makes ludicrous suggestion about Trae Young after Hawks' win

Shut it down. All of it.

You know the anti-Trae Young rhetoric has finally reached a fevered pitch when high-profile personalities are calling not for the Hawks to trade him, but to go so far as to bring the three-time All-Star off the bench.

Even the suggested role of the Hawks’ sixth man is a slap in the face to a player who is as talented and has accomplished all that he has in his still-young career.

And yet, that is exactly the idea that was spit-balled in a recent podcast.

“What if I offered you Trae Young, sixth man?” The Ringer's Bill Simmons asked guests David Jacoby and Kirk Goldsberry on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” on November 13. “Just Trae Young, coming off the bench.

“He’s a little overpaid. But he’s the heat-check guy coming off the bench for us, 22 minutes a game. ‘Oh, you’re [Young] not happy? Too bad.”

Goldsberry and Jacoby, after an appropriate stunned silence, dismissed Simmons’ suggestion.

“No?” Simmons asked both in question and acquiescence to his guest’s reaction. “I'm just trying to figure out outs for them because I think they know they're the team I saw tonight is the team they should be.”

Analyst's biases show in discussion about Hawks' Trae Young

Simmons gave himself away though, claiming, “by the way, Trae Young’s not playing well” with no substantiating evidence.

Young’s scoring is down to its lowest mark since his rookie season. But that can be attributed almost solely to his inefficiency from deep to start the campaign with Young shooting 33.% from downtown on the campaign. 

That has already started to shift. He has shot 37.2% from three over his last five appearances.

There was even an 0-for-6 showing mixed in there, underscoring just how off-base Simmons’ read on how Young’s season – which includes commendable defensive efforts – has gone.

The truth is that Simmons, a Boston Celtics fan, was overreacting to his team’s upset loss to the Hawks on November 12 with Young - who ranks second on the team behind only Jalen Johnson in on-off differential, per Cleaning The Glass - sidelined due to an Achilles injury.

That outcome only served as reinforcement for Simmons’ preconceived notion.

“The Hawks were 16-point underdogs on FanDuel heading into the game, which I thought was ridiculous. Because the line was reflective of that Trae Young wasn't playing. And as a Celtic fan I was like, ‘Crap! Trae Young's not playing. Now they're gonna just have long, athletic guys, and they're gonna actually play defense, and we're not gonna be able to just pick on Trae Young with every offensive possession in the last nine minutes of the game.’ No shots fired to Trae, but shots fired to Trae, because that's what Boston would have done. 

“The Hawks stumbled into their team tonight. It's Jalen Johnson and [Zaccharie] Risacher, and Dyson Daniels – who is now the best defensive wing in the league, I think. And if he's not, he's in the conversation for it. And it's just this athletic team with two bigs. Doesn't really matter who's in that guard spot it. Could be [Bogdan] Bogdanovic] when he comes back. But it's a team without Trae that I thought fell into place.”

Simmons is right that the Celtics would have attacked Young. They have done it with great success in the past, including in the postseason. He also correctly identified Daniels, Johnson, and Risacher as an interchangeable trio.

However, he is misremembering the recent history between these two teams.

Including Tuesday’s win, the Hawks have taken three of the last four meetings between the two teams in the regular season.

Sure, he can point to his Cs winning seven straight before that. But the Hawks had a three-game streak that preceded that and so on. Young was not active for either win last season.

He was a part of the three-game run, though, so discounting the Hawks with him would be silly.