The Knicks fans' fixation on Trae Young had become unseemly. Why were packs of feral bridge-and-tunnelers chanting the name of the Atlanta Hawks guard, unprompted, in regular-season blowouts of unrelated opponents? It had been three years since Young had humiliated their team in the postseason, and yet the phrase "Fuck Trae Young" had never left their lips. Sure, he held up his end of the bargain, telling visiting Knicks fans to "take y'all ass home" after a win in Atlanta last month, but their hatred still seemed disproportionate. Young seemed to have taken up residence in their heads without paying all that much in rent. At least the Hawks' 108-100 win over the Knicks in Wednesday's NBA Cup quarterfinal gave them something worth beefing about.
The Knicks seem to have specifically sought out that matchup, too. In the last game of the group stage, a front-to-back rout of the Orlando Magic, the specific point differential would determine their next opponent. If they won that game by at least 37 points—which they were capable of doing—the Knicks would have faced the Boston Celtics. So they sandbagged the last stretch of the game, letting the Magic outscore them by 16 points in the last six minutes, to line up a quarterfinal against the Hawks instead. The sarcasm from Knicks swingman Josh Hart indicated that the team knew what it was doing.
That looked like a reasonable business decision through the first half last night. The Knicks led by seven heading into halftime of a lively contest, and had done well to contain Young, who hadn't been able to connect from three or drop dimes with his usual flair. The funny quirk of this Hawks season, which has seen them beat the East's best teams in the Celtics and Cavaliers, is that they've managed to be decent even as Young struggled to hit anything from the floor. He's shooting 31 percent from three and 46 percent on twos; if the season ended today it would amount to the worst true shooting of his career, a hair worse than even his rookie season. And yet he's still leading the team to middling offense with his transcendent passing, surrounded by a platoon of two-way wings, as Jalen Johnson makes his lunge toward stardom, De'Andre Hunter gets out of the doldrums, and Dyson Daniels remains one of the peskiest defenders in the league. It's a cool team concept, and the Hawks' oddly good results in NBA Cup games suggest that they have a more interesting ceiling than their 14-12 record might suggest.
During halftime, Young found a way to expose what has been a pretty shaky Knicks defense. As he said later, "I figured out how they were guarding me, how they were staying with their man—I wasn't able to get guys involved." They were daring him to score. When they returned to the floor for the second half, Young hit a few shots, and the floor opened back up. He scored eight straight points, including back-to-back threes, to give the Hawks a lead they never lost. They won the third quarter by 16 points and were never again under serious pressure. Home fans who'd been enthusiastically chanting "Fuck Trae Young" simply simmered and watched him put the game away.
The Knicks started out the game by trusting in their man defense, but by the end of the game, they were throwing doubles at Young—always risky with a passer that gifted, and naturally, he slung the ball wherever it needed to go. By the last few minutes, his joy turned spiteful: tossing an alley-oop and capering down the floor like the little scamp he is. Young finished with 22 points and 11 assists. As the game clock expired, he got on one knee and mimed rolling dice on the Knicks logo to a chorus of boos. "We're going to Vegas, so that's what I had to," Young said afterward, noting that he'd planned the celebration a few days earlier with his younger brother. “I rolled an eight. And then I picked it up. And then I rolled it again. So I picked up the money after that and we left," he said, according to SNY's Ian Begley.
As irksome as Young can be, Knicks star Jalen Brunson had the correct takeaway: "We should win the game if we don't want him to do that."
