Trae Young Addressed His Beef With Nate McMillan And Basically Only Made Things Worse
Carmen Mandato. Getty Images.As soon as Shams dropped the Sunday afternoon bomb that there was a little bit of beef between Trae Young and head coach Nate McMillan that resulted in Trae not playing Friday night, you knew this was going to be a topic of conversation today. Especially since Trae had quite the response yesterday
I'm not sure why he called it a private situation or something about his private life. I read that Shams report and I wouldn't exactly call it "personal" There was a clear miscommunication between the player and coach about his availablility ahead of a game. That's someone's personal life? Was he trying to say there was some sort of HIPAA violation or something? Very odd.
Trae was asked about everything today and he basically doubled down
Great questioning by Zach Klein. I feel like with Trae repeatedly going to the "private matter" line it's a way for him to sort of shed responsibility for what happened. I'm obviously guessing here because I have no idea what this "private matter" might be, but I dunno, that whole answer/situation seems strange. Especially when the reporter came back with that line about John Collins. You could tell Trae didn't really have an answer for that.
I will say maybe the tone of the reporter could have been a little better because it clearly set Trae off and made him get defensive, but the root of his questions wasn't all that crazy. It's totally fine if Trae didn't want to answer it, but then don't get mad when people ask you about it. Especially when you're the franchise guy.
With all this stuff it's pretty simple how things work. When your team is struggling or underachieving, things like this become a story/issue. Trust me, I lived through it with the Celts until their turnaround last year. When you're also having a down season like Trae is currently having combined with the team underachievement, that's how things like this snowball. Everything you do or don't do gets blown way out of proportion. It can get frustrating as a player I'm sure because it definitely gets frustrating as fans.
So how do you stop it? Easy. Win. The second you start winning, all of this stuff stops. When is the last time you heard an "anonymous source" slander the Celts? They were releasing those quotes to ESPN every 2 seconds before January of last year. Since then the Celts are winning and suddenly those sources don't exist. The same shit will be true here as well with Young. If the Hawks right the ship and start winning and he gets back to playing at a high level, nobody is going to give a shit about something like this. But until that happens, drama is going to surround both the player and team. This certainly won't be the last Shams bomb we get if the Hawks continue to struggle.
No better time than to start tonight against the Thunder. A little SGA vs Trae matchup could go a long way to quieting the drama, and it wouldn't hurt if we got some Vintage Trae as well
