At the beginning of the season, I may have been somewhat of a “Trae Young Hater” (I prefer the term “Trae Young Realist”, myself, since the only player I hate for no reason is Marcus Smart). However, his strong play in the past five games has me coming around him a little bit, and it is getting harder and harder to maintain my stance of hatred (or, as I prefer to call it, my stance of “realism”).
Really, if you take the entire month of November out of the equation, Trae Young has been a pretty good point guard. In November, Young scored fourteen points per game on 35% shooting from the field and 20% from three-point land. The rest of the season, he’s been comfortably over 40% from the field and around 34% from three, which isn’t outstanding but is perfectly fine for a rookie point guard playing on a bad team.
I’m actually getting rookie Brandon Jennings vibes from Trae Young. Obviously, Young is already a better passer than Jennings ever was, but both players were given the reins to their teams very early and struggled at times with that responsibility. Both were also undersized and struggled to take any amount of contact. Jennings was on his way to being a great point guard before he blew up his Achilles, and it seems like Young is on the same trajectory. Now all he needs is a 55-point game and the vibes I’m receiving will be proven to be authentic vibes and not just fake vibes emanating from my overclocked microwave.