The Whiteboard: Trae Young has become criminally underrated

The NBA discourse cycle is vicious and unforgiving. Few players are ever truly spared. When you've been out of the playoffs for a while and your team suffers a fate worse than death — that of being boring — then it's hard to avoid criticism and backlash. Few players know this better than Trae Young, whose fall from grace has been swift since the Atlanta Hawks' infamous and unfollowed 2021 conference finals run.

Folks just don't seem to like Trae Young anymore. The Hawks haven't been very compelling of late and, as any All-Star would, Young has shouldered the majority of the blame for Atlanta's inability to repeat 2021's postseason success. The Hawks are stuck in no-man's land, not quite able to rebuild but clearly not built to contend. Young's reputation has imbibed the uneasiness surrounding the franchise as a whole, with some critics straight-up connecting the Hawks' futility to Young's status as their No. 1 star.

That's how it goes in the NBA. If your team doesn't win, you tend to get thrown under the bus. That said, Young has become criminally underrated at this point. We have lost to plot when discussing what makes Young so special. Some of it is Atlanta's struggles. Some of it is a stylistic vendetta, as not everybody can get behind how Young goes about scoring his points. He gets hit with the "grifter" tag, not dissimilar to James Harden before him. There are also baked-in biases that tend to crop up when talking about a 6-foot-1, 164-pound point guard. Young is far from elite on defense, but we tend to dismiss small guards in today's NBA, even if Young has proven time and time again that he is an outlier.

I'm here to say: Trae Young is still really, really good at this basketball thing.

It's time to give Trae Young the respect he deserves

ESPN's preseason ranking of the top 100 NBA players has Young at No. 37, behind the likes of Jrue Holiday, Jamal Murray, and Kyrie Irving. With all due respect to each individual named, what are we doing here? It feels like exceedingly willful ignorance on the part of ESPN's staff and a majority of NBA fans at this point. The Hawks are a tough watch, but acting as though Young has fallen off some cliff — rather than blaming the front office, coaches, and teammates around him — feels misguided.

Last season, Young averaged 25.7 points, 2.8 rebounds, and a career-high 10.8 assists on .430/.373/.855 splits. His efficiency perked up notably compared to the previous campaign, with Young leading the league in assist percentage (45.1) for the second time in six seasons. The Hawks, for all their struggles, were 12th in offensive rating despite the ghastly Dejounte Murray fit and palpable organizational turmoil. This team has never suffered to the point of offensive ineptitude with Young on the floor.

Defense was Atlanta's primary vice, as it has been for the majority of Young's career, but we cannot just blame him and ignore the rest of Atlanta's rotation. Murray, for example, was brought it to blanket opposing ball-handlers and serve as the Hawks' much-needed perimeter stopper. For whatever reason, he decided quality defense was beneath him after arriving in ATL. Clint Capela got old. De'Andre Hunter never lived up to his reputation on that end. Young is part of the problem on defense, but the whole of it.

In fact, Young put together the best defensive season of his career in 2023-24. The effort meaningfully improved. He worked hard to generate stops, or at least to provide resistance at the point of attack. He can only stretch so far on that end due to his size limitations, but Young put in the work. The apparatus around him failed.

As for offense, Young has been the only force dragging Atlanta toward respectability. He is a singular advantage creator, blessed with twitchy handles, a dynamic first step, and some of the craziest passing vision in the league. Young's playmaking chops are borderline unmatched at his position. There are plenty of great passers at the point guard spot, but very few can slip through cracks in the defense and manipulate with their handle at Young's level. He gets where he wants to get on the floor and has the scope of vision to deliver any pass in the book. For such a diminutive figure, it's amazing how much zip Young puts on his passes. He gets them to the right spot at the exact right time, and he can rifle those passes with either hand.

Factor in Young's potency from 3-point range, and he's a complete headache for opposing defenses. Critics have rightfully pointed to Young's stunted development as an off-ball weapon, but he's truly one of the best on-ball engines in the NBA. As far as elevating teammates and creating fissures in the defense with nothing but his handle, creativity, and shooting gravity, Young is one of one.

Young basically guarantees your team an above-average offense. A great point of comparison for this line of inquiry is Jalen Brunson. The Knicks put an elite defense around Brunson and reaped the rewards. Brunson is undersized and quite poor as an individual defender, but he's a special advantage-creator who sets up everything for the Knicks offense. Since New York was able to put four plus defenders in his orbit and lean on the schematic brilliance of Thibs, the Knicks went far in the playoffs and Brunson is widely hailed as a top-15 player now.

The gap between Young and Brunson does not feel as wide as it's portrayed at ESPN, or in most player rankings. Brunson has unique strength and finishing craft around the rim, but Young is more dynamic with his perimeter shooting and he's leagues better as a passer. Put Young on this Knicks team and Brunson on the Hawks, and we're probably having this same debate in reverse.

Brunson is a total foul grifter, but he's on the Knicks, a team with a "gritty" reputation and a winning formula. Young baits defenders for fouls in Atlanta and gets called out for it; not because he's great at forcing trips to the free-throw line, but because he is "unethical" in his point gouging. It's all circumstantial. If Atlanta could just put a more cohesive and productive unit around Young, the discourse would flip in a hurry.

Until then, expect Young to remain one of the most underrated stars in the NBA.

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