The Whiteboard: Tyrese Haliburton vs. Trae Young is about feelings, not stats

On Sunday night, Trae Young put up 31 points and 9 assists against the Magic. It was his 11th game of at least 30 and 9 since the beginning of December, continuing a run of remarkable box score production. Of course, the Hawks lost in overtime to the Magic and Atlanta is 5-12 since the beginning of December.

Last Friday, Chris Kline and I shared our All-Star picks and I left Young off my ballot completely. There's almost no chance Young actually misses the All-Star team and, based on the first round of fan voting, there's a good chance he joins Tyrese Haliburton in the starting backcourt.

I think the comparison with Haliburton is particularly instructive because their box score stats are extremely similar but the results are so wildly different.

Haliburton and Young are first and second in the league in assists per game. Haliburton is averaging 24.2 points, 12.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game. Young is averaging 27.8 points, 11.0 assists, 3.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals. Haliburton's shooting percentages are meaningfully better but Young gets to the line at such a high rate that it closes a lot of the gap in their true shooting percentages. Haliburton is a much better defender but that alone doesn't account for the different outcomes their production has created for their teams.

The Pacers, with Haliburton at the helm, are 20-15 and just a half-game out of the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference. They're leading the league in offensive efficiency, riding a tide of positive vibes, shopping for stars at the trade deadline and already fantasizing about the free agents they might be able to lure this summer.

The Hawks, meanwhile, are 14-21 — the worst record in the league outside of the Blazers, the Grizzlies (who were without Ja Morant for 25 games) and four teams on track to be among the worst in NBA history. They have arguably more talent and depth than the Pacers but are reportedly considering selling off parts at the trade deadline and deciding between a full-scale rebuild or trying to reload on the fly.

Both teams have a star point guard in the center of everything, one who, on paper, looks incredibly generous in setting up their teammates and creating easy scoring chances for everyone around them. But the way they do that is very different.

Trae Young vs. Tyrese Haliburton: Measuring the vibes

While Haliburton and Young register a similar number of assists, they come on a very different volume of passes. Young averages about two more minutes per game than Haliburton, but about 15 fewer passes — 57.2 to 72.3. If you compare that to their total touches we find that about 76 percent of Haliburton's touches end with a pass; for Young, that number is just 64 percent.

That may not seem like a huge difference and there is an argument that there is value in Young turning a higher percentage of his passes into assists. But the other side of that coin is Haliburton giving up the ball more freely even in non-assist situations, offering his teammates the opportunity to attack and create chances on their own. Whereas Young's teammates are more likely to only get a pass if it's an obvious scoring chance.

Both players are among the league leaders in time of possession — Young is second at 8.5 minutes per game, Haliburton is seventh at 7.4. But Young's average touch time is 5.73 seconds, more than a full second longer than Haliburton's 4.61. Of the 28 players who have the ball in their hands for an average of five or more minutes per game, Young has the second-longest average touch time. Halibruton's is 22nd.

What that means is that Young's teammates spend a lot more time watching him with the ball in his hands. Haliburton is more likely to pass, move, get the ball back, pass and move again. Even though their possession stats are similar, Haliburton doesn't dominate the ball in the same way as Young.

Then there is what each of their teammates has to watch on plays where they don't get the ball. Young is far more turnover-prone than Haliburton — averaging about 50 percent more turnovers per 36 minutes. Also, a higher percentage of Young's turnovers come in stolen or lost-ball situations — he's more likely to turn it over by over-dribbling than Haliburton, as opposed to trying to get the ball to a teammate with an over-eager pass.

Both players are the offensive fulcrum for their teams and thus often have to take the tough shots, the ones late in the shot clock, where their team needs to create something out of nothing, or when all the defensive attention is on them. But Haliburton takes significantly fewer shots after a touch time of six seconds or more, and is far less likely to attempt long jumpers from absurd distances or when he's well-defended.

Young is 20-of-61 on shots from beyond 30 feet this season. And, to be fair, there is utility in being able to hit 3-pointers at a 34 percent clip when all you have to do is dribble over halfcourt and pull up. But Young has shot 184-of-539 (34 percent) for his career on shots 30 feet or more from the basket, in just 385 games. That means he's averaging more than one of these shots per game — it's not a situational weapon, it's something the defense (and his teammates) can count on. 

Again, Young and Haliburton are extremely similar in the number of assists they create, the points they score, the shots they take and they amount of time the possess the ball. But with the Hawks, everything flows from Young, everything is directed and orchestrated by him. Haliburton blends more into the Pacers system, leading but also empowering and involving his teammates to a different degree.

Those things don't show up directly in the boxscore. But they show up in the standings and they show up in the vibes.

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QUICK HITTER: RJ Barrett is taking off

RJ Barrett seemed liked a secondary prize for the Raptors given how much he had been struggling this season and how badly they needed a point guard like Immanuel Quickley. But so far, Barrett has given them everything they could have hoped for and more.

Through four games with the Raptors, Barrett is averaging 21.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists, shooting 53.8 percent from the field and 52.6 percent from beyond the arc. He's almost certainly not going to continue making half his 3-point attempts but he's had stretches of very accurate shooting and it's possible the change of scenery has simply taken some of the pressure off there.

The other big difference is that he's been much more aggressive in attacking the basket. According to the NBA's player tracking stats, he's recorded 35 drives to just three pull-up mid-range jumpers since coming to Toronto, a ratio of more than 11.7-to-1. With the Knicks this season, that ratio was about 7.6-to-1. Barrett is not an exceptional finisher on the drive but he's not a very good pull-up shooter either and four extra drives for every pull-up he takes is a hugely positive development.

He'll need to maintain that level of aggressiveness when his outside shooting inevitably regresses but, for now, he's embracing the opportunity to remake himself into a much more efficient complementary creator.

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