Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young seems to have whatever the opposite is of a killer mentality right now.
The Hawks were blown out by a Utah Jazz team missing Donovan Mitchell on Thursday. The loss dropped them to below .500 on the year.
Young spoke afterwards on the difficulty of sacrificing early in the season.
“I think guys are learning that,” he said, per The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. “We’re no longer the hunters. It’s regular season. I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot more boring than the playoffs. You got to find that motivation to play like the playoffs.”
For a young player coming off his first playoff appearance, those comments were a pretty bad look for Young. Twitter quickly let him know as much.
Young and the Hawks are doomed if this is the mindset that they have. It is one thing to be 36-year-old LeBron James with four rings and a past run of eight straight Finals appearances. The same goes if you’re 33-year-old Steph Curry or even 26-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo with championship wins and/or MVP awards to rest on. But for a 23-year-old Young to be saying this nine games into the season with only a single conference finals appearance to his name is definitely not it. Young’s comments also look especially awful when you consider that the Hawks were a lottery team before last season.
The one-time All-Star Young got his very first taste of the bright lights of the playoffs last season and definitely seemed to bask in it. Perhaps all the glitz and glamour has gotten to his head prematurely.
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