Uh oh. The “start Jeremy Lin instead of Trae Young” talks have, officially, begun. The Hawks commentators were carefully, without trying to offend anybody, talking about it, and that’s official enough for me. Everyone knows that commentators are mouthpieces for the organization. If they’re talking about it, that means that someone high up told them to so that the fanbase can get used to the idea.
This happens all the time. I remember the Bucks commentators talking endlessly about “if you had to choose would you trade for Monta Ellis or Stephen Curry” and “Monta Ellis is way better than Stephen Curry” and “It might be time for Andrew Bogut to move on” and “someone should gift the Golden State Warriors some titles” and “I really love how Monta Ellis plays the game would he not be a nice fit next to Brandon Jennings?”.
They said all those things and you can guess what happened. Just saying, this chatter is portentous.
Starting Lin (who is on a nice run of games) instead of Young (who is not) might help a little bit, but the Hawks’ problems run way deeper than Young’s utter inability to hit any sort of three-pointer. I won’t go into them all now, the list is way too long to enumerate, but starting Lin is like putting lipstick on a pig. I hope I’m using that idiom right, and for you non-English speakers out there, there’s no actual pigs or lipstick involved.