There's a lot of drama happening for the Atlanta Hawks organization.
So they recently fired head coach Nate McMillan. And now a report is coming out that Trea Young, his time with the Hawks, may be coming towards an end. Does this surprise you? Not at all. Surprising that Trae Young might be on his way out of Atlanta because Atlanta's got a new general manager. They're about to have a new head coach within the last two months. They fired well, they reassigned their general manager and then fired their coach. So they've done a total front office overhaul. They went all in on this season by trading three unprotected first round picks to the Spurs in exchange for Dejounte Murray. And they are a play in team and they're going to be a play in team at the end of this season and it appears that they have peaked with the Trae Young cast of their team, which was Ben Simmons passed up an open dunk and they lost a playoff game to allow them to go to. An open dunk. Andre Young mind you Yeah. The one in I think it was one in 770 chance that the Sixers blow a 24 and 27 point lead in various games of that series allowed them to get to the Eastern Conference finals. And look if Trae Young is the best player on your team, making the Eastern Conference finals is a massive success. I don't think Atlanta anticipated that Trae Young would end up being the best player on their team, or at the very least in the last six seasons of Trae Young. They haven't put a single other All-Star around him. I disagree with them not thinking the Trae Young would be the number one player on their team. When you think a guy top ten, you want them to be a number one player on your team at some point, right? But yeah, it never turned into anything more. You hope that guys who are drafted that high end up in the Hall of Fame one day end up as one of those retired jerseys in the rafters for your team. So Trae Young was a highly drafted first round pick a guy that did get a team to the Eastern Conference finals just a couple of years ago. Three years later, he's going to not be on said team because Atlanta's you know, they're a team that hasn't had a lot of stars to really cling to. They had that like fun run during the Boston Celtics, Big three, Miami Heat, Big three in the early 20 tens with Al Horford and company that kind of fell off and dissolve pretty quickly. But other than that like they haven't had like a lot of star power to turn into and trae Young was turning into that guy for them. He was the villain of Madison Square Garden. He was the guy that killed the Knicks. He had all the hype, all the praise. Even going into last year's playoffs against the Miami Heat, I thought, okay, there's an outside chance that they could give this Heat team some trouble. Right? You talk to off podcasts about him being a top six player in efficiency. The fact is he's declined. He's not that same player. What's his current number? What's his current rank this season? 23 among all players, 20 among players with more than 30 games. We think about all this ending stars, all the guys that kind of around trae Young's age group, right? They like a guy like Jayson Tatum. Once Jayson Tatum gotten into that top ten, he's never left. He's been solidified as a top ten guy. trae Young, The fact that he's going to drop all the way from top six to being a top 20 guy who knows top 30 guy gain in disagreements with coaches, gain disagreements with the front office. I think there's always going to be a role for a guy like Trae Young, a guy who shoots a high percentage from three, although even those numbers are starting to decline rapidly this year. He's currently only shooting 32% from three point range. Think about what it's supposed to be like, right? Small guard next. Steph Curry was a lot of the monikers thrown for him, mostly because he was the type of guy to take risky shots. You know, Paul George would say would be a bad shot right at them. The fact is that those bad shots aren't going in at as high equipped this year. And we're starting to see the Hawks end trae Young's career suffer for it. So I will say for trae Young's career, the first half of the season, compared to the second half of the season, his shooting numbers have changed dramatically. I think if you take just his last 25 games, he's shooting like 37% from three, shooting 88% at the free throw line. His true shooting percentage is up 15 points. So trae Young has been better the second half of the season than the first half of that. First half was rough. And remember, in the playoffs last year, I think he went like one for 18 during one stretch against the Heat. Like the Heat figured him out real quick and it was not pretty. Well, I guess that's another question, right? Has the league figured out trae Young. No, because trae Young's efficiency numbers and true shooting numbers have gotten super better in the second half of the season this year. So he's still a great player. So do you think potentially why we saw a slow start to this season might have been an adjustment from Dejounte Murray Gain injected into the lineup and maybe there was some what we say lack thereof chemistry early on in the season could be. That could be factors we don't know about could be that he really hated his coach could be that Hibbert his coach clearly had beef which kind of led to the coach getting fired last week. And now we have Quin Snyder coming in. Let's play the probability that he ends up staying in Atlanta, even though they're exploring trade talks. Player gets explored in trade talks at some point or the other. What do you think Quin Snyder brings to this team? Because we saw Quin Snyder have success in Utah. Obviously never. I believe they topped out at the Western Conference finals under Quinn was second round. Second round. Okay. They did get the number one seed in the west one year, which I think we should understand. They are that is they lost during the. Paul. George. Kawhi Leonard, you. That's right. Yes. Well, he was one of the highly regarded coaches in the league. At one point he comes to this Atlanta team after a year off. Look, when you have a new general manager and a new coach, it would be, I would argue, like irresponsible for you to not see what you can get for Trae Young because you're starting fresh. You you he has three years under contract a star player and I'm going to call Trae Young a star player, not a superstar, but a star player with three years under contract. Look at what Donovan Mitchell just got for Utah last year. Under the same circumstances, three years under contract, a star player in his mid twenties. It would be irresponsible for them to not see what they could get in exchange for Trae Young on the open market. So with with that situation they'll be fine. And look, he's got three years under contract they've already invested in Dejounte Murray I think Quin Snyder given time will do something nice with the Hawks. As with any NBA coach it's all about the talent you surround him with. Why people are hesitant here is because at the end of the day, Trae Young is still really young. He's 24 years old. Like, we don't see a lot of teams move off a 24 or 25 year old that has already led and I will say led a team to an Eastern Conference finals. Trae Young really did put the Hawks on his back that year. Now if it's a lack of motivation issue, if it's a league figuring it out issue, if it's a team construction issue, those are all factors that can be fixed and corrected. We could just you make a counter adjustment rosters that takes the roster, but if you're in your mid twenties, there's still time to figure this out. Like and again I think for Atlanta you know unless you're going to get the deal of the century right if you're getting like comparable to like a Boston Celtics Nets type deal or any time the, you know, Celtics end up fleecing the Nets because that tends to happen, then I don't see the reason to move off of trae Young immediate. I think it might be a mistake if you're not getting that type of deal. Well, funny you should mention that because I will throw an option out there that is too perfect because where is Trae Young from Oklahoma. Where did he go to college? Oklahoma. Who's got a million draft picks into perpetuity and isn't tanking anymore because Shai Gilgeous-alexander is good enough to carry that team to a ten seed with a bunch of bums. Oklahoma who's got Chet Holmgren coming back next year is a rookie Oklahoma. I think that that is a match made in heaven. If you put Shai and trae in the backcourt, maybe Giddey has to go to the Hawks in that trade. But you put trae and Shai in the backcourt, Chet Holmgren in the center, you've got the multiple Jalen Williams because again, Oklahoma has two guys named Jalen Williams on their team. Oklahoma City could be building something nice. And so that seems like a match made in heaven. If they wanted three years guaranteed of trae Young and they have all the cap space in the world so they don't have to worry about trae Young's $8,048 million contract. So I think it's safe to say that the Mavericks won the trade. I think the Mavericks won the trade. But again, trae Young has not had another All-Star in Atlanta in his six years. Like the reason that general manager got fired is he drafted trae Young and didn't really do anything else after that, just kind of treaded water. Dejounte was supposed to be there for him. Yeah, well, yeah. And so was Kevin Huerter and so was Bogdanovic when they got him you know it was. Kevin Huerter looking good now for Sacramento so. Oh yeah maybe like the been lets go but but they basically gave away Kevin Huerter for free because of salary cap reasons they just gave away Kevin Huerter for a protected first round pick which was a terrible trade by Atlanta just a terrible trade. Granted Kevin Hurt has been playing like shit for two months, but it's still a terrible trade given the production that Kevin Huerter was putting up before then and him still being on a rookie contract. All right, guys. Well, what do you think of trae Young's future with the Atlanta Hawks? Do you think it is coming to a close? Do you think it would be a mistake for it to come to a close? We do like the years that it was like in the video. Subscribe to the Channel Palace on our social media for Juju and stay safe, happy and healthy. We will see you next.
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