Trae Young Had No Answers For The Miami Heat’s Defense
Trae Young was the topic of conversation when the Atlanta Hawks faced the Miami Heat.
During the regular season, Young averaged 28.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 9.7 assists, earning him the first All-Star selection of his career. Naturally, he caught the Heat’s attention in the opening round of the postseason.
Miami proved to be up to the task of guarding Young.
Young averaged 15.4 points, five rebounds and six assists in the series. He had a field goal percentage of 31.9 percent and shot 18.4 percent from 3-point range. According to StatMuse, Young had more turnovers (30) than field goals made (22). This is the first time since 1980 that a player had less than 25 field goals with at least 30 turnovers in a single postseason.
With Young being shut down, the Atlanta’s offense stumbled. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra talked about Miami’s ability to slow down the Hawks’ star player.
“It takes a ridiculous amount of multiple efforts,” Spoelstra said. “You have to extend your defense. We are basically extending it 94 feet just to try and get the ball out of his hands, to wear on him. That just makes the court bigger, so guys had to cover a lot of ground. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but if you are making those multiple efforts, you just have to try to make it tough. Our guys were really committed to that side of the floor through these five games.”
Spoelstra knew that Young was going to be the main player Miami would have to worry about throughout the series. He says that their gravitation towards defending Young was out of “great respect.”
“We had a little bit of the benefit of watching the play-in where they just torched Charlotte,” Spoelstra continued. “You could see that offensive firepower. Then the Cleveland game, you saw what Trae was able to do in that second half. That catches everybody’s attention. He’s a tough challenge. It really took everybody making multiple efforts to try and deny him the ball. Deny him some of his comfort stuff and do it with discipline.”
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Jayden Armant is a contributor to Inside The Heat. He is a student at Howard University. He can be reached at jayden.armant@bison.howard.edu or follow him on Twitter @jaydenarmant.
