Trae Young faces his most laughable criticism yet

Trae Young, for better or worse, loves talking smack. Today, this trait led to perhaps the funniest criticism leveled at Young in his NBA career.

In response to a question about why offseason runs have higher intensity than the All-Star game, Patrick Beverley tweeted, "Because All-Stars take the game for granted. Not 1 All-Star on the court. good bump."

Trae Young replied with what we all were thinking, "Relax. Let us speak for ourselves."

Beverley, like Young, also loves talking smack. Unlike Young, however, Beverley has had little measurable success in the NBA. Regardless, he attempted to dunk on Young, saying, "I don’t think he’s in a position to speak. I don’t think he’s won enough to even speak to me like that or tweet me like that.”

“He’s been to the playoffs three times. I’ve been to the playoffs nine. He’s been in the NBA seven years. My first seven years, I didn’t miss the playoffs at all - in the Western Conference. His rebuttal is probably going to be, ‘Yeah, you weren’t the main player on the team.’ Absolutely right. This is why it’s a team.”

Beverley missed the mark with these comments

This is obviously just an absurd criticism. Sure, Beverley made the playoffs more than Young, but this could not be more misleading. If Trae Young had teammates the caliber of James Harden and Chris Paul or Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, he would have already won multiple NBA championships. Trae Young also led the Hawks to their most successful playoff run in history and dropped 48 points on the Defensive Player of the Year in the Eastern Conference Finals at just 22 years old.

That's playoff success.

Of course, Beverley was not finished. He added, “I’ve talked to people in Atlanta. They don’t want to play there. They don’t think he’s a good leader, they don’t think he’s a good teammate.”

To be fair to Beverley, at one point, this was true. People both in and out of the organization were hesitant about Young's leadership and willingness to be a team player. Today, however, Hawks insiders say that the team fully trusts Young as the on and off-court leader. GM Onsi Saleh even explicitly said, "I think a lot of his leadership went unnoticed to the common eye. The way that he helped develop our young guys and made them better was significant."

Beverley relied on a classic use of projection, or projecting your weaknesses onto another person, in this argument. Beverley is the one who cannot speak on All-Star games and playoff success, not Young. Despite playing five years longer than Young, Beverley has made the Conference Finals once, the same as Young. Beverley was a valuable player to the 2021 Conference Finalist Clippers, but Trae Young's impact is on a different level.

This isn't the first time the two have butted heads. In 2022, Young took a jab at Beverley for missing the All-Defense teams. While this wasn't the same malicious slander Beverley spread, Young was clearly making fun of the defensive specialist's infamous temper.

At the end of the day, Young and Beverley are not in the same conversation. If Beverley had objective criticisms about Young, that would be understandable. But to directly compare his NBA career, which didn't begin until he was 24, to Young's, which includes a 48-point playoff game at 22 years old, is patently absurd.