Trae Young sat hunched over in front of his locker with his left hand propping up his face with his phone in his right hand. His pink “L.O.L. Surprise!” backpack, which is part of being a rookie, was on the ground next to him.
Minutes before media members entered the Hawks’ locker room, Young had his own “LOL, surprise!” moment when he pulled up from 30 feet with less than five seconds left in a tie game against San Antonio and drilled his first game-winning shot in the NBA. After the ball went through the net, Young calmly turned around, took two steps and symbolically pressed the ground to celebrate a 130-127 preseason win Wednesday night.
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But Young wasn’t on Twitter or Instagram to see what people were saying about his heroics. Instead, he sent a text message to his family’s group chat.
“When I look at my phone after games, the first thing I do is text my family that I love them and appreciate them,” Young said.
The play wasn’t drawn up for Young to pull up from just inside halfcourt. Young said the play was supposed to be a quick pick-and-roll that Alex Len would set at the top of the key. The Hawks ran that play numerous times in the final few minutes of the game, so Young had picked up some tendencies of Spurs point guard Bryn Forbes when the screen was coming. Forbes turned his head toward Len, who was coming to set the screen, and when he did that, Young fired.
“The deep shot, when it went in, I definitely had a flashback to the shots I took at Oklahoma and them going in,” Young said with a wide-eyed smile.
Hawks head coach Lloyd Pierce, in jest, called the play, “Trae, dribble down and shoot.” There were less than 15 seconds left after the Spurs’ Derrick White tied the game at 127. The Hawks didn’t have any timeouts left, so they were trying to organize on the fly. Some may criticize Young’s shot selection, but Taurean Prince had no reaction when he saw Young take the shot because it’s what the rookie does and will continue to do.
“Have you ever watched Trae Young before?” Prince asked rhetorically. “He’s a big-shot taker and a big-shot maker. He’s electrifying. I’m glad he’s on my team.”
Trae Young from WAY downtown. BUCKETS. Game was tied 127-127 with under five seconds to go. pic.twitter.com/tRmnBgekGm
— Chris Kirschner (@ChrisKirschner) October 11, 2018
In the preseason, the stakes weren’t important for the team’s overall record, but the game could be critical for Young’s development. He replaced Jeremy Lin with less than five minutes left and the Hawks holding a two-point lead. There were nine straight possessions from the teams that ended with points being scored, which led to Pierce jokingly calling the high-scoring affair “a defensive exhibition.”
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Young took over the offense with less than three minutes left, starting with a runner in the lane to give the Hawks a 122-121 lead. With just more than a minute left, San Antonio’s Demar DeRozan missed a jumper that Young corralled. After a Hawks timeout, Young drove hard through the lane and knocked down a tough runner to give the Hawks the lead once again.
The Hawks still had the lead with more than 20 seconds left when Young fired a no-look pass inside to Len for a dunk, but the big man missed it. Len, who was icing his hand after the game, said he missed the dunk because he hurt his hand on his first attempt of the game. He couldn’t palm the ball as well as he normally can, so when he received Young’s pass and went up for the dunk, the ball slipped out of his hand. That was one of several plays during which Young showed he doesn’t need to get the glory to be successful.
“I don’t necessarily want to take the shot; I want to be the one to make the right play,” Young said. “If someone else is open — I’ve had games in college where I’ve given it up to someone else to make the last shot. The main thing is having the ball in my hands and making the right play.”
Pierce said that any win the Hawks are going to get this year probably is going to be a close margin, so every possession the team can have in crunch time is important. Four games into the preseason, Pierce was adamant that Young already knows everything the Hawks want to do on offense. He just doesn’t know the nuances of every player yet. He doesn’t know if Len likes receiving his passes high coming off the pick-and-roll or if a bounce pass is what Len prefers or if Len needs to be set on the pick-and-pop when receiving a pass for a 3.
And Pierce is clear that Young is probably not going to know all of the nuances of his teammates until the end of the season.
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“Once we get to game 60, and he’s probably playing Houston for the first time, it’s going to be a different situation,” Pierce said. “It’s going to be all brand new. He has to go through it. There are going to be some ups and downs. Playing (Chris Paul) is different than playing Steph (Curry). It’s different than switching on DeRozan. If you haven’t done it, then you have no idea. And right now, he has no idea of how to guard who we play next. We play Miami. He has no idea of how to guard Goran Dragic. Until we go through it, there’s always going to be a lesson and something for him to learn.”
Pierce hasn’t committed to naming Young the starting point guard when the team opens its season Wednesday against the New York Knicks, but after four games of preseason play, it’s clear that this is Young’s team, and that was evidenced when he replaced Lin in crunch time. The rookie finished with 22 points, seven assists, two steals and just one turnover.
Vince Carter said the win may not have meant much to the Spurs considering their success the past decade, but a win like the one Wednesday is a teaching moment for Young and the rest of the young Hawks. Confidence-wise, it’s an added boost for Young to realize that Pierce has trust in him already to be on the floor in a key situation.
“It’s a big responsibility to be a point guard in the NBA,” Carter said. “With him being the great shooter and scorer that he is and passer, understanding who’s rolling, who needs to get touches — there are so many things. He listens to everybody’s information that he gets. There’s a lot of information that he gets while still being the Trae Young that we all know and drafted. He’s only going to get better.”
Atlanta’s Trae Young (11) had 22 points, seven assists, two steals and just one turnover Wednesday night. (Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images)
There have been constant reminders from Pierce to Carter to general manager Travis Schlenk about taming expectations from zealous Hawks fans who think Young is going to be the next Curry immediately. The ups are going to be mountainous for him this season, just like Wednesday. But the lows are going to be valleys, like starting 1-of-11 from the floor in the team’s preseason opener.
But the way Young can mask a poor shooting performance is with his passing ability. There was a pass in the second quarter when Young got a steal, and as if he were a quarterback and Len his wide receiver, he launched a perfect outlet pass in between two defenders that Len caught and finished with a slam. Len said he had no idea the ball was coming his way until the last second, and that’s where Young’s brilliance shows and led Len, a former Phoenix center, to make a comparison to arguably the greatest player in Suns history.
“Trae’s unbelievable,” Len said. “Everyone looks at him as a shooter, but he’s a great playmaker. He reminds me of Steve Nash a little bit with the way he tightropes the baseline — he sees everybody. He always finds the open man.”
When asked to describe the Hawks’ win in one word, Len smiled and replied with two: “Trae Young.”
(Photo of Trae Young: Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images)