Defense is the one hole in Trae Young's game, but the Knicks have yet to exploit it in three games vs. the Hawks.
Since the moment Trae Young was chosen by the Atlanta Hawks, his promise as a legitimate franchise player was always reliant on how he’d hold up on defense in the playoffs. In the first two years of his career, the Hawks were substantially worse on that end with Young on the floor, and despite being almost exactly league average defending in the half court when Young played this season, advanced metrics still frowned at his impact—according to FiveThirtyEight.com’s catch-all, out of the 255 players who logged at least 1000 minutes this season, Young ranked 254th in Defensive RAPTOR.
The most obvious parallel was Steph Curry, who, despite entenching his stardom with back-to-back MVP awards and an irrefutable standing as the most revolutionary figure of his generation, still was seen (even at his peak) as a weak link on defense in the merciless hotbox that is postseason NBA basketball.
At a slight 6’3”, Curry was picked on. The deeper his Golden State Warriors advanced, the more concerning his physical disadvantages became. Young is even smaller than Curry, and a vast majority of the Hawks’ personnel decisions since 2019—from drafting big, athletic wings like De’Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish to trading for Clint Capela—were made in anticipation of some inevitable hiccups they’d face in the playoffs, against teams that will go at him in isolation and force Young to guard the point of attack.
That reckoning has ostensibly finally arrived against the New York Knicks, a physical, smashmouth crew that is led by Julius Randle, a 6’8”, 250-pound bruiser who’s plenty comfortable with the ball in his hands, directing traffic out on the perimeter.
But three games have passed and, for the Hawks, so far, so good! The Knicks have generated a 101.4 offensive rating with Young on the floor (a number that makes the Hawks’ defense even better than the Lakers during the regular season and any team except the Bucks in these playoffs) and have been unable/unwilling to take advantage of the shortcomings many other teams probably would. Some of that is because the Knicks just, um, don’t have a good offense, and, even though they isolated nearly as often as any other team during the regular season, according to Synergy Sports, asking them to flatten their strategy out just to put Young on an island over and over again may cover them with even more mud than they already have to fight through.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t go after him far more often than they have, with Randle (who has not isolated against Young a single time in this series), RJ Barrett or even Derrick Rose, but almost every time they’ve tried to manufacture a mismatch Young has wiggled out of it before any damage can be done.
Instead of switching onto Randle and putting his teammates on high alert, when the Knicks use Young’s man (most often Reggie Bullock) to set a ball screen, he quickly hedges and then scrambles back. Meanwhile, the shot clock keeps ticking and the Knicks have to generate a good shot without the spacing that’s typically required to do so.
None of this makes Young an upgraded version of Tony Allen. And when the Knicks actually luck themselves into a mismatch they’ve done a decent job showing just how feeble Atlanta’s star point guard can be on that end.
And there have been a couple instances where the extra help shaded in his direction has left the Hawks vulnerable elsewhere. On the play below, Young is forced to pick Barrett up in transition and the Knicks immediately base their possession around it. Young knows he’s getting Capela’s help from the baseline side and for some reason decides to stop pressuring the ball. The domino effect of Capela’s early help is Bogdan Bogdanovic having to sink in and be weary of Taj Gibson (Capela’s man), which opens Bullock up on the opposite wing.
The Knicks have also gone at Young a couple times by running Bullock off screens and forcing Trae to pursue, but Bullock isn’t able to create looks for himself, use his size in the post or off the bounce in any meaningful way. The Hawks might not be so lucky if they advance to the next round, where, in all likelihood, the Philadelphia 76ers will look to abuse him early and often with Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris (assuming Young matches up with Danny Green).
But before the second round gets here, the Knicks should hunt Young far more than they have, especially with Randle or Barrett. They should screen and rescreen with Bullock (or whoever Young’s primary assignment is), and run off makes and misses more than they have to try and force some early cross matches in transition.
Far too often Young gets to relax when the Knicks have the ball; they may not win another game if what we’ve seen so far continues to happen.
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