From the second Trae Young entered the league people have doubted whether he has what it takes to be a superstar. I, along with the haters, were saying that ‘Trae doesn’t make his teammates better’, ‘Trae is too small’, ‘Trae will be exposed as a defensive liability in the playoffs’ but then came the 2021 playoffs.
Everyone, including diehard Hawks fans, were shocked and amazed by the conference finals run the Hawks made. Trae silenced a lot of haters, myself included, but questions remained about the Hawks’ roster. Would Deandre Hunter, Oneyka Okongwu or Cam Reddish blossom into a co-star for Trae Young? Is it really sustainable to have a roster with 10 or so guys who think they deserve 20 minutes a game?
The Hawks did not carry their red hot run at the end of the 2020-2021 season into last season. Changes needed to be made, the Hawks had to consolidate their roster. The first small domino fell before last year’s trade deadline as the Hawks shipped out Cam Reddish to the Knicks for a mediocre future pick. Then, after fizzling out in 5 games against the Heat in the playoffs, it was clear the more drastic changes were necessary.
In comes the big splash: Dejounte Murray.
The Hawks sent the following for Mr. Murray:
– 2023 first-round pick via the Charlotte Hornets (top 16 protected)
– Their own unprotected picks in 2025 and 2027
– A 2026 pickswap
I was a supporter of the deal, albeit not a strong one, for two main reasons. First, the Hawks paid far less for Murray than their contemporaries did for the likes of Paul George, Donovan Mitchell or Rudy Gobert. Second, the most obvious backcourt fit with Trae is a tenacious defender that can make up for Trae’s size deficit, that is Murray to a tee. Third, the Hawks needed to make a swing for the fences play before it was too late.
Can Trae Evolve Into a Gravitational Force?
Prior to this season, every aspect of the Hawks offense has revolved around Trae Young’s shot creation. Stemming from his days as a long range marksman at Oklahoma, people have compared Trae to Steph Curry. But I have always found this comparison to be a slight misreading of Trae’s brilliance.
Trae is at his most comfortable running the pick’n roll. He has the absolute complete bag in the pick’n roll. From getting the defender on his hip and pulling up for a floater/push shot
To using his lightning quick speed to finish at the rim
To pulling up from insane range
To absolutely nutty skip passes
Trae has the complete pick’n roll bag.
And I’m not the first person to realize this about Trae. Defenses primarily strategize against Trae Young the pick and roll maestro, not against Trae Young the deep shooting threat. In a similar fashion to Steve Nash and Chris Paul, Trae’s three pointer is just a tool in his toolkit to defeat pick and roll coverages. In fact, Trae’s favorite player growing up was Nash and Trae considers Nash to be the GOAT (a title Nash does not accept).
But could Steve Nash or Chris Paul play with another ball-dominant creator? Or would it create a redundant offense that wastes one of their talents? Right now, that is the very question that Trae and the Hawks are facing.
The great irony of the Trae-Steph comparison is that if Trae Young wants to take his game (and the Hawks) to the next level he is going to need to learn how to be a lot more like Steph.
Becoming more like Steph Curry, the absolute best off ball superstar maybe ever, is no easy task. It has been beaten to a pulp but Steph’s ‘gravity’ is the core of the Warriors offense and how the Warriors have gotten the most out of their role players. The theory of Curry’s ‘gravity’ is clear– when someone can shoot the ball that well the defense has to focus so much attention on chasing them offball that it creates wide open lanes for teammates.
Going into the season, I figured that the Hawks would try to embrace the idea of Trae as an offball threat by getting him involved in designed plays. I thought maybe coach McMillian would steal some Warriors plays like the iconic “elevator doors”. I won’t belabor describing it, just watch and appreciate its glory:
Alternatively, I thought that the Hawks could use Murray as a super version of Draymond on the offensive end. Watch these Draymond dimes to Andrew Wiggins and just take note of where Draymond is standing and how Steph is constantly moving off the ball to distract defenders. Also, Deandre Hunter doesn’t have quite the hop that Wiggins does but he has enough to execute these plays:
The Harsh Reality of the Hawks’ Offense
When I started doing my homework for this article, I assumed I would find some of these kinds of plays with Trae running around off-ball as Murray directs traffic. But much to my chagrin, the film tells a different story. The Hawks offense with Murray and Trae is essentially just a lot of ‘your turn, my turn’.
Take this play against the Bucks. Trae clearly knows it’s ‘Murray’s turn’ to handle the ball and he walks up the court. Then, almost pouting about not having the ball, Trae stands a few feet behind the three point line. Jevon Carter picks up on Trae’s disinterest and literally turns his back on Trae.
And this is not some one off thing, as soon as Trae sees its ‘Murray’s turn’ he disengages from the play. All of these clips come from the Bucks game and Trae is barely in the frame. He is literally invisible when Murray has the ball:
Now, I don’t bring all of this up just to dump on Trae or say that he sucks. In fact, I think it’s easy to both shift the blame to Coach McMillian and put a positive spin on this. First, it’s clear that Trae does not know what he is supposed to do when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands. And why would Trae know how to operate as an off-ball player? Trae has been the high usage focal point on every single team he has played on since he was 10 years old. Leading to my second point, the role of a coach is to play to their players skills and help players to unlock parts of their game that they didn’t even know existed. If I were McMillian, I would force the starters to run a designed off-ball play for Trae at the beginning of every game.
Aside from an occasion Murray cut, Murray and Trae almost never play off each other. This was the closest that I came to finding a harmonious play from Murray to Trae:
This play is literally just Murray driving and Trae standing in the corner.
Staggering ‘staggering’ numbers
Over the last few seasons, the Hawks have struggled when Trae sits. In the minutes over the last two seasons where Trae sat, the Hawks were -4.2 and -2.5 points per 100 possessions. That is bad but about normal for when a superstar sits (for context, last season the Nuggets were -10.6 without Jokic, the 76ers were -5.4 without Embiid, the Mavs were -3.5 without Luka and the Warriors were -2.4 without Steph).
One of the best arguments that I heard in support of the Murray deal was that the Hawks could ‘stagger’ Trae and Murray. Essentially, one of the two guys would be on the court at all times to run the offense. Not a revolutionary idea but still a good one.
The sad news is that the Hawks are still not good when Trae sits. This season, the Hawks are -5.7 with Trae on the bench and even worse they are -9.8 when Trae sits and Murray plays. So, thus far, the idea of Murray running the offense while Trae sits has been a failure.
Now, it’s worth considering that this could just be a reflection of the Hawks bench. During the times when one of the duo sits, they are typically playing with a crew of bench players– Okongwu, Jalen Johnson, AJ Griffin or the Holiday brothers. Certainly some young talent there but also not an above average bench that’s ready to contribute now. And to be fair to Murray, the Hawks are a comparable -5.5 when Murray sits and Trae plays. I suspect that when Bogdan Bogdanović comes back from injury that the Hawks will play a lot better when one of their stars sits; the Hawks are asking a lot from Justin Holiday and rookie AJ Griffin right now.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that things could be going a lot worse for this new duo. Go give a Timberwolves fan a call and see how they are feeling about the ‘twin towers’ (which, btw, I think people are panicking a bit too much). I also haven’t gone into any detail about the defense end of the ball but Murray has helped Trae out in so many ways.
For example, in the game against the Pelicans, the Hawks ‘hid’ Trae on Herb Jones and put Murray on CJ McCollum. The Hawks dared the Pelicans to let Herb create off the dribble or post up Trae. And it kinda worked, the Pelicans were scared to run things through Herb. To make matters even funnier, the Pelicans decided not to cross-match and put Herb on Trae. The zany boy genius against the giraffe, fun.
Despite the lack of a coherent offense that incorporates both Trae and Murray at the same time, the Hawks are still +7.5 with all of their starters and +9.7 with Okongwu instead of Capela. If i’m a Hawks fan i’m rooting for Trae to unlock the final frontier of his offensive game– to become a new kind of blackhole, the kind that uses its gravitational force to suck defenders in regardless of who has the ball in their hands.
The Reedbound 