Welcome to "Summer Workout Plan," our annual offseason series in which we dive into a specific area for improvement for certain players to take the next step in their development.
First up this offseason? Two-time All-Star Trae Young.
The Hawks are going to look quite different next season.
After the Heat made light work of them in the first round of the 2022 NBA Playoffs, the Hawks made a big move in acquiring Dejounte Murray from the Spurs for, essentially, a bunch of first-round picks.
The Hawks are still very much Trae Young's team, but trading for Murray signals a couple of things. One, Atlanta is focused on improving defensively after slipping all the way down to 26th in defensive efficiency this season. Two, it wants to pair Young with another All-Star who can take some of the playmaking burden, which has gotten quite heavy, off of his shoulders.
While Young and Murray have the makings of a dynamic duo, there are some concerns about the fit between two guards that are at their best when they have the ball. It doesn't help that Murray is a career 33.0 percent 3-point shooter and Young has developed the reputation of not being the most active player off-ball.
For Murray, it's somewhat simple — he has to become a more reliable spot-up shooter. For Young, it's a little more complicated.
TRADE GRADES: Did Hawks or Spurs win Murray deal?
Is Young already capable of playing off-ball? As his father made crystal clear, yes. If nothing else, he's a knockdown standstill shooter, having converted 41.7 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s since entering the NBA.
Young is not someone the defense can help off of.
Is there still room for Young to improve as an off-ball threat? Also yes.
The person Young can best learn from is someone he has been compared to time and time again in his career: Stephen Curry. In addition to the deep 3s and ability to pull up from anywhere on a dime, a key part of Curry's case as the greatest shooter of all time is his relentless movement when he doesn't have the ball in his hands.
Not only is Curry as good as it gets at scoring off of screens...
...but his willingness to set screens himself creates countless opportunities for his teammates.
It's not unusual to see two defenders gravitate towards Curry when he sets a screen out of fear of him getting a slither of daylight, leading to backdoor cuts and layups.
Many words were written by yours truly this season about how difficult and exhausting Curry is to defend. He never stops moving.
MORE: Has Curry entered the all-time top 10?
To be clear, expecting anyone to do either of those things at the same level as Curry is unreasonable. Just because someone is an effective spot-up shooter doesn't necessarily mean they can operate off of screens, and there are few — if any — players in the NBA who can match Curry's conditioning. If it were easy, lots of players would do it.
The difference with Young is that he has shown enough flashes to think they could be a bigger part of his game. Maybe not the screening — the 21 pounds Curry has on Young comes in handy when standing his ground against bigger players — but certainly the scoring off of screens.
Young's speed makes him hard to keep up with on those plays and he's shown the ability to read screens at a high level, manipulating them depending on how his defender is guarding him.
It looks like Tyrese Haliburton is expecting a handoff here, so Young quickly switches gears:
He's also a versatile shooter. Close out on him too hard, and he'll side-step his way into an open 3 or attack the basket for a high-arching floater.
According to NBA.com, Young attempted only 17 shots off of screens the entire 2021-22 season, but the results were highly encouraging: 1.42 points per possession, ranking him in the 97.2 percentile.
"Working off the ball is something that I'm pretty good at anyway," Young said following Atlanta's loss to Miami. "I know how to come off screens and get into the paint and find others. Working off-ball is pretty similar, it's probably easier than working on the ball. I know how to do it.
"I think it's really just about putting the right system for me to be off the ball."
If Young is as willing as he says he is, taking a page out of Curry's book will go a long way in him and Murray reaching their full potential and the Hawks returning to the top of the Eastern Conference.
