Should the Hawks be worried about Trae Young’s Summer League performance?

Of all the prospects taken in the 2018 NBA Draft, arguably none of them has a higher ceiling than Trae Young. However, at the same time, it’s also quite possible that no other lottery pick has a lower floor than Young either. It’s just as easy to imagine him being an All-NBA point guard in five years as it is to see him regularly putting up 35 point games in China after not being able to translate his college success to the professional game.

For critics of Young’s game, his lackluster performance at Summer League served to confirm their intuition. In three games in Salt Lake, Young shot just 23 percent, which improved to a still less-than-great 38 percent in four games in Las Vegas. He did show intermittent promise though, particularly in his 24-point, 5-assist appearance against the Bulls, in which he shot 7-of-13 from 3.

While it’s a fool’s venture to try to project a player’s NBA future based off a handful of Summer League games, his Summer League performance nevertheless encapsulates the risk and uncertainty that makes him such a boom or bust player — if the shots fall, he’s going to look transcendent, but if they don’t, what then?

Thankfully, though, Young is not merely a shooter. Young can make shots, sure — and he’s one of the best off the dribble shooters to enter the league in recent years — but his shotmaking may not even be his best skill, just the most obvious. He is also a very adept passer and playmaker who is skilled at running the pick-and-roll and creating for others — he led the NCAA in assists last year, as well as points.

The primary NBA player Young has been compared to is Stephen Curry, which makes a certain amount of sense, but it’s also a bit misleading. Both are known for their quick release and ability to launch, and make, shots from seemingly anywhere on the court. However, it may make more sense to compare him to Steve Nash, perhaps not in style of play, but in skill set. Young, with his court vision and playmaking ability veers closer to Nash — who also had a tremendously reliable jumper, after all — than Curry in that regard.

Even on nights when Young struggles to find his shot, missing several 3 pointers in rapid succession, he will still be able to contribute to the offense in other ways — primarily through his passing, but also due to the gravity he demands from the defense as they will likely be hesitant to sag off him too much out of fear of giving up an easy 3.

Jimmer Fredette is not at all a similar player to Trae Young, but Fredette’s lack of NBA success, on the surface, appears to provide those worried about Young’s future with a potential precedent. Fredette was a dominant scorer at BYU, averaging nearly 30 points per game his senior season, able to make shots from well beyond the 3 point line with ease. After being selected with the 10th overall pick in the 2011 Draft, Fredette was never even able to average more than eight points per game in the NBA, and while he shot a very respectable 38 percent from 3 for his career, he was unable to get to the rim for easy buckets or make shots from elsewhere on the court.

It was almost as if he didn’t know how to play if he wasn’t the centerpiece of the offense. Young, though is far more multidimensional than Fredette and other great collegiate scorers who were unable to make it in the NBA, and he is now the undoubted building block of this young Hawks team.

Trae Young is joining a Hawks team pretty much bereft of playmakers, and will be the team’s dominant ball-handler, with the greenest of green lights. The Hawks have already invested a lot in Young by trading a presumably surer thing in Luka Doncic to the Mavericks, and have decided to bet that Young’s ceiling is high enough to offset the risk of his lower floor. The concerns about Young are valid, but when you have the chance to develop a player as skilled as him, it’s usually wise to bet on talent. As much as anything else, though, Trae Young gives the otherwise rudderless Hawks a definite identity. They are a team that will depend on him for playmaking and scoring, while allowing him to find his way, which is exactly what they should do. They drafted Trae Young for a reason, and now, they just need to let Trae Young be Trae Young.