By KL Chouinard
Trae Young's game has taken an upward turn this season.
The preposterously lofty standard on offense has not changed, and there are easy numbers to show that he has met or exceeded all of the offensive benchmarks that he posted in previous years.
It's all of the other stuff.
The Hawks' win in San Antonio serves as a case in point. Trae scored 45 points and gave 14 assists to his teammates. But the lasting memory of that game will always be Trae accelerating and decelerating to draw a win-saving charge with 2.9 seconds left.
"Let's go ahead and change the narrative now," Head Coach Quin Snyder said afterward, "Trae Young taking a charge at the end of a game is a big-time play."
Trae said that he has always had a knack for drawing charges, but doing it at the NBA level takes a lot of refinement.
"To be honest with you, when I was in 5th or 6th grade, I went to a college camp at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, a little D-II school. I got the Best Defender Award there because I took charges the whole camp. I've always been good at being sneaky and taking charges. It is about timing, and as I've gotten older, obviously, guys are bigger and so you've got to know when and who to take a charge on."
Trae also hinted that he and teammate Clint Capela may have a friendly rivalry to see who can draw more charges this season. Capela currently leads the Hawks with 7 charges drawn and Trae ranks third on the team with 5 charges drawn.
"It's just something that I know is going to help our team," Trae said. "If I'm more locked in on defense and doing little things here and there, like taking charges, it only helps our team. So I just say that all to say: I just try to do whatever to help my team win."
The Hawks have generally employed two different tactics on defense when presented with a pick-and-roll play between an opponent's smaller point guard and a taller screen setter. The first is a "show" defense, something they did a lot of early this season (and in this week's road win in Washington). At the point of the screen, both defenders will try to momentarily wall off the point guard so that driving angles are limited and passes have to be longer and slower (allowing the original defender on the rolling screen-setter to work his way back into the paint).
In these situations, the remaining three defenders – one of whom is often Trae – have the job of rotating to cover the other four offensive players as needed. The job takes effort, communication, anticipation to limit layups and open threes, but there are also opportunities to disrupt passes, something Trae has done well. Through games played Jan. 4, Trae is tied for 8th in the NBA with 1.5 steals per game.
Trae noted that the "show" defense made life a little easier when he is one of the two defenders on the ball but also a bigger challenge when he was one of the three playing away from it.
"Going over screens, obviously, I know I got a big helping, so I'm able to get back in front a little easier. But being the help guy, I mean, if I'm the low man, I've got to help a little higher, and if it's Giannis (Antetokounmpo) rolling or if it's Brook Lopez rolling, I've got to ... you know what I'm saying?" he said, trailing off on the thought of trying to absorb a charge on a pair of Milwaukee Bucks who out-height him by roughly a foot and outweigh him by approximately 100 lbs.
"I've got to be there to help," he said, "and I'm ok with doing it, but it's just pros and cons to everything."
The other pick-and-roll defense that the Hawks have used to defend pick-and-rolls is a "drop" defense. On these plays, the defender guarding the ballhander will chase up away from the basket and over the screen in order to prevent open jump shots, while a bigger defender like Capela or Onyeka Okongwu tries to simultaneously disrupt the driving lanes of both offensive players.
It is in these situations where Trae has been tough to screen. When opponents have tried to set the pick on him, he has often been able to use his quickness to dodge it entirely, which in turn, often results in the opponent setting an illegal moving screen to ensure that there is contact to make the play work.
In those moments, Trae has done the unsavory, unglamorous work of absorbing (as opposed to avoiding) the moving pick to draw the offensive foul. In fact, per Basketball Reference, Trae has drawn a team-leading 16 offensive fouls from opponents this season. (De'Andre Hunter ranks second with 14, and Garrison Mathews sits third with 12.)
Of course, defense consists of a lot more than charges taken and offensive fouls drawn. You have to guard the ball and stay in front, take away driving lanes, handle switches, and make timely rotations. From an early point of the season, Snyder reiterated that Trae was doing these sorts of things that support the overall team defense.
Once again, Trae's offensive resumé is unparalleled. With 11.3 assists per game, he is on pace to obliterate a franchise single-season record that he himself set last season. In any given game, he is capable of finishing the game with two handfuls worth of passes that, for a middle-of-the-road NBA player, might be the best pass they've ever thrown in their career.
His 30-foot three-pointers both set up the team's pick-and-roll game while also spacing the floor for his teammates (and contributing to his 28.2 points per game). His proficiency in the high pick-and-roll is the engine that fuels the Hawks offense.
Trae's virtuoso offense combined with his contributions on defense should put him in February's All-Star Game. There really should not be any doubt about that at all.
You can vote Trae Young to the 2024 All-Star Game by visiting Hawks.com/AllStar.