The Atlanta Hawks fan base's favorite Redditor has a new piece of evidence to file into his "Trae Young deserves more respect" cabinet.
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Young, who posted a masterful 29.6 points per game stat line in 2019-20, didn't do so in the most efficient nature, shooting 43.7 percent from the field and 36.1 percent from deep. No, those aren't bad numbers by any means. But there were several examples — for instance, when Young scored 23 points on 30 field goal attempts against the Pacers in December of 2019 — that showed he wasn't taking the most prudent approach to his offensive attack.
Prudent or not, his performance in the Hawks' 2020-21 debut was immaculate and as efficient as ever before. In fact, it broke an NBA record.
His final stat line came out to 37 points on 10-12 shooting from the field, 5-6 from beyond the arc, 12-14 from the free throw line, six rebounds and seven assists. You didn't misread that. He had 37 points on 12 field goal attempts. I know you all can do math, but for the sake of emphasizing how crazy this is, it's worth mentioning that if you took 12 threes and made all of them, you'd only have 36 points. His accuracy and ability to draw contact on other attempts that didn't fall was otherworldly against the feeble Bulls defense, with the entire Hawks offense recording an unfair 62.5 percent effective field goal percentage on the night.
Here's the total list of top scorers with 12 or fewer field goal attempts, with Trae sitting on top to kick off a promising 2020-21 campaign.
He also, as you can see, only needed to play 26 minutes to put up such outrageous numbers. That wasn't quite a record, but it wasn't too far off for that time limit.
Though the focal point of the Atlanta Hawks' offseason may have been the acquisitions of names like Danilo Gallinari and Bogdan Bogdanovic, in addition to whether or not John Collins is a long-term fixture for this franchise, opening night served as a great reminder of whose team this really is.
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