Finding Trae Young
From: The One That Didn’t Get Away II
In this series I want to highlight a thought I had during the new season, one I couldn’t shake and just had to write down. This time I caught something interesting when watching the Bulls-Hawks-game and decided to follow my instincts. Try to follow me as I try to use many words just to say: Trae more corner 3s good for Hawks.
Trae Young → Corner!
Snyder said he and Trae Young had the chance to sit down and meet last week. Said he wants to set the bar high for him and said “the key word for Trae is efficiency.”
There’s probably an entire Literature 101 Course about “What could he have meant with that?”, but here we are again, wondering, what Coach Snyder meant with that in its entirety.
One week into the 2025/ 2026 NBA Season and the Hawks sit at 1-3. I’m not here to tell you why that is, what I want to look at is: What is Trae Youngs role in this new rotation? Let’s look at his on/off numbers for this season:
All of these just to These numbers show a lot, but to me they clearly indicate two things:
The Hawks have to survive the minutes without Trae
The Hawks have to cover for Traes defense (or lack of)
Offseason Moves
I think the world of Coach Snyder. Always was of the impression, he knew how to work with the personnel instead of forcing a system on a roster. The Hawks resigned Daniels, which was crucial, and added NAW and KP to their active roster (Dante/ Kennard too). Letting go of/ trading Bufkin (poor guy), Capela, LeVert, Mann, LNJr., Niang and Roddy, the Hawks actually improved their roster and their financial situation for the future. Rookie Asa Newell is here to stay, too. As of right now, they are 51m below the 1st Apron (that can’t be true).
Motives
These are players, that can cover for Traes defensive deficiencies, which is the ultimate goal because, come playoff time, every team will attack Trae early. Last playoffs we saw the league picking up the ball handler earlier and earlier, which, given the talent level in the NBA, seems sustainable. A lot of teams are going to deploy that strategy in the regular season to see if it works and what they need to improve on. While the players around Trae are gifted, they are either unreliable (Jalen Johnson, KP) or have offensive flaws (Dyson, NAW, OO) — when the first round starts, you want them to be able to take care of the ball and create some offense.
2025–2026
The Hawks are sitting 1-3, recently lost to the Bulls, and seem to have problems initiating effective set plays. I haven’t watched all Hawks games, just the recaps and the Bulls-Hawks game, but the box scores seem to paint a similar picture: Less 3PAs, more 2PAs, more FTAs, but also shooting (marginally) worse on each %s. They are rebounding, assisting, stealing and blocking less than last year as well as scoring fewer points.
So, what we want to see is: Can other players initiate the offense, get the Ball going and pressure the opponent? Can they do it without Trae? Trae is the most effective, if he can operate with the ball in his hands, and he loves those walk-in 3s, those bigger-than-the-game-shots, the it-gets-the-people-going daggers. But what if he could be used as a Catch-and-Shoot-Threat? I get it, it’s a small sample size and honestly, I wish I knew where to find tracked paths of player (or I chart out my own, but this is a lazy-analysis-time!), but I couldn’t, so I was left with what I saw from that one game. I saw Trae bringing the ball up the court, passing it and immediately relocate to the corner. I thought that was interesting, so I checked all of Youngs Corner 3PAs so far. Look at this from Basketball Reference:
We can see Trae shooting five times from the corner, which - doesn’t say anything besides: He tried it 5 times from there. It’s not even possible to deduce the difficulty, since, at least two of them were when the clock was running down (End of 1st/ End of 4th against Bulls). But it is interesting, if we can pair that chart with these numbers from the same page:
Shooting a horrible 19.2% from 3 is maddening, but I want you to focus on the &Ast’d part: If we want the Hawks to be more effective offensively, that’s one of the numbers (along with the corner threes), that should rise. Imagine a world, where Dyson or JJ can initiate an action and have Trae as a reliable C&S corner threat for the times, they have to sit him.
What’s my point?
Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s just a random five-shot blip early in the season. But the way this team runs looks like it’s covering the two main things I initially mentioned: Covering for Traes Defense and trying to find a way to survive Traes off-minutes. Trae in the corner could open up new lanes for everyone, could give Snyder more flexibility, could test the play making of Dyson, JJ, and whoever’s next to them. If “efficiency” really is the keyword, then perhaps it’s not just about shot selection or usage rate. Maybe it’s about movement.
(I know I wrote “once a week” for this series, but … life happened, and I am stuck here, with some more time to kill than I usually have. So, take this as an article-bonus once i will miss a week.)