Early in the season, Trae Young was extremely fond of taking extra-deep three-pointers. They never went in, but he kept shooting them anyway, and it made for a cool highlight when one of them finally did find the bottom of the net, so this unwise tendency of his was tolerated.
Lately, I haven’t been noticing so many of those outrageously deep attempts, but, in this game, Young brought the trend back with full force. The majority of his three-point attempts against the Celtics fell into the “occupies a separate zipcode” category, and he actually made some of them! I still don’t think that those shots are a good idea, but when he’s hot and splashing them, they seem like the best idea in the world.
I’m doubly impressed because my own shooting form breaks down pretty bad about two feet behind the college three-point line. I don’t know if it’s just that my skinny twig arms don’t have enough muscle to launch the ball further than that, or if my skinny twig legs aren’t giving me enough lift, or if my not-quite-picturesque form isn’t workable from that distance, but when you move me back like that, I turn from a fearsome three-point shooter into a fearsome (for my own teammates) bricklayer. So if Trae Young is looking to do some community outreach this off-season, he can come up here and teach me his secrets.