SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt breaks down the key story lines from the 2018 NBA draft, including a big night for big men and Michael Porter Jr.'s fall. USA TODAY Sports
ATLANTA — On a Saturday afternoon in January, Trae Young attempted 39 shots in a college basketball game that his team lost. While there have been plenty of moments along Young’s eight-month ascent from relatively unknown college freshman to NBA lottery pick that screamed “This Is Your New Life,” none provided such clarity about what he would eventually become as that one.
At the moment Young’s Oklahoma team lost 83-81 to Oklahoma State that day, his existence as merely an exciting basketball prospect ceased, giving way to a new reality where the mere mention of his name necessitated an opinion. Young, the physically slight point guard with seemingly unlimited shooting range, was now less of a player and more of a topic for the tastemakers of the sports debate world.
Suddenly, Young’s career was on the table for dissection seemingly every time he turned on ESPN: Was he really the next Steph Curry? Did he shoot the ball too much or too little? Is he just confident or cocky?
“His whole world just changed,” said his father, Rayford Young. “He learned so much because those same people that gravitated toward us and loved him, those same people were on TV having a totally different conversation. So you take a step back and say, ‘Oh, OK, this is what can happen. I think that’s going to serve him well at this level.”
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Young, who arrived to his new hometown on Monday, won’t be any less polarizing as the centerpiece of the Hawks’ rebuild. Not only did Atlanta take him with the No. 5 pick, which was higher than he was projected on a number of mock drafts, but general manager Travis Schlenk did so after trading the No. 3 pick to the Dallas Mavericks, who had such a strong desire for Slovenian star Luka Doncic they were willing to part with a future first-round pick.
That kind of straightforward transaction will make it easy to compare the player the Hawks drafted with the one they passed up, and the second-guessing will start as soon as Young has a bad game and Doncic has a good one.
But Atlanta’s bet on Young is not, contrary to popular belief, some attempt to create a knockoff Eastern Conference version of the Golden State Warriors, where Schlenk was a front office stalwart until coming to Atlanta last year.
Given that connection, it’s easy enough to put Atlanta's first-round picks into Golden State archetypes: Young is a knockoff Curry, Maryland sharpshooter Kevin Huerter is a big wing along the lines of a Klay Thompson and Villanova’s Omari Spellman is kind of an undersized, high-energy center like Draymond Green who can stretch out to the 3-point line. But really, Atlanta’s draft indicated more about Schlenk valuing skill and shooting rather than trying to find facsimiles of players he helped draft years ago.
“I swear to goodness, people think I’m joking, but it never once crossed my mind,” Schlenk said. “Listen, all the philosophies we have here are the same philosophies we had there so there are going to be similar players. There’s certainly a lot of shared characteristics both franchises look for in players.”
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The truth is, Atlanta's fascination with Young is grounded in something far more aspirational than seeing him as a Curry clone. Of any player who was drafted last Thursday night, none has more potential to be a high-wattage superstar in all that it encompasses. If Young hits his ceiling, he’s not just going to be one of the better point guards in the league, he’s going to be the rare type of player who creates a buzz in every arena he steps foot in.
Atlanta, which is best described as a very good NBA city but often a lukewarm Hawks city, hasn’t had that kind of star since Dominique Wilkins was traded in 1994. And in that respect, Young seems like as good a bet as the Hawks could have made.
When it comes to evaluating how a player’s basketball ability is going to translate from college to the pros, we’re really all just guessing. But in terms of how someone is going to handle all the ancillary stuff when their life changes overnight, you don’t really worry about that with Young. Even at the tender age of 19, he already knows what it’s like to be part of the basketball zeitgeist.
“What I went through this year at Oklahoma, knowing a lot was on my plate, that is going to help me for this level,” he said. “I got a little piece of what it is and how to handle it, so I think it helps me.”
In many ways, it’s exactly what he asked for. Instead of going to a Kentucky or Kansas, where he would have had to blend in more with other five-star players and ostensibly sacrifice some of his statistics, he instead stayed in his hometown of Norman, Okla., and went to a school where he was going to be the centerpiece of everything.
“He was betting on himself,” Rayford Young said. “It was either going to be boom or bust.”
It went boom in the fifth game of his career when Young put 43 points on Oregon, and for two solid months after that, he was the biggest thing to hit college basketball since Kevin Durant. But that 48-point, 39-shot performance against Oklahoma State triggered a backlash that seemingly affected Young, who went out three days later against Kansas and had just nine field goal attempts, scoring 26 points in a win. Suddenly, the talking heads were saying he didn’t shoot enough, that he needed to do more.
Of all the things Young experienced on and off the court at Oklahoma, having a dose of that dynamic as a teenager play out every day on social media and national television might be the best preparation for NBA stardom he could ever get.
“I’ll never forget one day Dick Vitale tweeted he’s the best point guard he’s seen since Isiah Thomas came out of Indiana, then three weeks later he’s like, (down on him),” Rayford Young said. “So Trae’s been through it. As long as he keeps praying, keeps the lord first and keeps family first he’s going to be fine because the same thing is going to happen at this level.
“He’s going to have tough games where people say, ‘Why did Atlanta make that trade?’ And then he’s going to have great games where people say, ‘Now we see why Atlanta made that trade. So it’s my part as a dad and the coaching staff to make sure he understands there’s an ultimate goal and just take it day by day. Hopefully it works.”
The Hawks just bet a significant piece of their future that it will.
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