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Luka Doncic led one of the best draft classes in ages. Almost every team wanted to draft and wanted him to lead their team. The Phoenix Suns decided to draft hometown star DeAndre Ayton while the Kings were not sure Luka Doncic wanted to stay with them.
The Atlanta Hawks had landed the 3rd pick while the Dallas Mavericks had the 5th, so they decided to trade their pick to Atlanta along with a 2019 first round pick. The Hawks ended up picking Luka Doncic and traded him for Trae Young and the Dallas pick.
Since then, there have been endless arguments about whether the deal the Hawks did was a good one or not, with the scales tipping on the negative side since Doncic came out the gate with an NBA ready game and had some superb performances.
Young had started off the season slowly but has now been one of the best players in the league now. Doncic and Young have been a part of each other's destiny ever since the trade and are now becoming cornerstones of their own franchises.
Let us look at the player comparisons between the 2 of them and the player who is likeliest to win the Rookie of the Year:
Season Statistics
Trae Young has been superb this season and just stepped up his game of late, averaging 18.7 points, 7.9 assists and 3.6 rebounds a game this season. He has stepped it up since the All-Star Game, scoring 23.3 points per game, 9 assists, 4.6 rebounds per game as well.
Luka Doncic has been no pushover as well and has been leading the rookies with scoring, averaging 21 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.8 assists as well, on track to become the first rookie since Micheal Jordan to average 21 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists.
He also has a true shooting percentage of 54.7% this season, while Trae has been at 53.2%. Doncic's usage has been through the roof too, with a 30.2% usage and has been playing just 32 minutes a game, compared to Young, who has had a 28% usage and plays 31 minutes a game.
Final Verdict:
Doncic edges out Young in a really close call as Doncic is having a statistical season that has not been accomplished since Jordan in his rookie year and that just puts him over Young in the discussion of Rookie of the Year.
Style of play and overall game
Trae Young
Trae Young has been one of the most electrifying players in the NBA this season and certainly among the best rookies from the 2018 draft class. He came into the NBA with a reputation for being the "Baby Steph".
Known for his 3-point shooting coming out of college, he was not that good coming into the NBA, shooting below 35 per cent from deep over the first four months of the season. Since then, Young has gone back to looking as deadly as he did at Oklahoma, shooting 43.5 per cent from beyond the arc in February.
He is also known for his quickness and one of his more underrated talents - passing. Early in the season, Young showed shades of Nash and has dazzled the NBA and us fans with his highlight reel passes and since the All-Star break, it appears Trae has put his shooting and passing together and becoming a deadly player.
Luka Doncic
Doncic, on the other hand, has been a conundrum for all NBA front offices since his debut in the EuroLeague. He has since matured into one of the most efficient and all-round players in the world. Doncic's scoring is great by itself and is averaging the highest points scored by a rookie since Blake Griffin.
Doncic has been often compared with LeBron James all season long, given his point forward style of play and general high usage rate. But his game is an amalgamation of a lot of stars in the league right now.
He has the passing awareness and commanding presence of LeBron James, the stepback game of James Harden, the efficiency similar to Kevin Durant. He is not an explosive finisher or a big athlete, but his fluid game and scoring ability always ends up drawing a double team.
He has it all in his game and if he had better teammates, maybe his passing vision would have been put on a better display. With the Dallas Mavericks on a slide where they are not winning a lot of games, so Doncic's stock has gone down overall.
Final Verdict:
While Trae has been lighting it up since the All-Star break, you cannot disregard the impact Doncic has had on the Dallas Mavericks since he joined them. He has definitely made them an instant contender if paired with the right stars.
Young has shown an erratic game all season long, with his shooting not being up to the mark at first and only has started to get better, whole Doncic was up and running since the start of the season. Doncic edges Young out here as well for the Rookie of the Year award.
Fit with the franchise and Rookie of the Year
Luka Doncic
At 6-foot-8 and 228 pounds, Doncic has been one of the most talked about stars in the NBA. He is a teenager (turned 20 recently) in the body of a grown man. Doncic is not an elite athlete, but he knows how to use his size to get where he wants to go on the court.
Doncic is also an elite passer, not unlike his rival Trae, and needs it, along with his outside shooting, to create driving lanes for himself as he is not a very athletic player. He has also become the cornerstone of this Dallas Mavericks franchise and has made it so that him showing up on a given night changes whether the team wins or not.
His next best teammate in Kristaps Porzingis is injured, so he has to do it all on his own. Doncic has fit exceptionally well into this franchise and has made it his own, so much so that they are looking for players to surround around him rather than making him switch his game.
The 2019 offseason is one which the Mavericks will look to surround Doncic and Porzingis with another solid star player as their bench and other role players look poised to play better as they grow from one season to the next.
Trae Young
The Atlanta Hawks are known as the Golden State Warriors of the Eastern Conference, having gotten a reputation of drafting players that fit the modern philosophy of the game which the Warriors have brought along.
Trae Young fits this philosophy perfectly as well. The 6 foot 2 guard is one of the smallest in the NBA but has shown flashes of some elite level of scoring. His 3 point range is as far as you want it to be, he is hitting 28 feet shots with really good accuracy.
His passing is also at an elite level and he is creating really great looks for his teammates, making life easier for both himself and his teammates. The Hawks have become a really solid team ever since the All-Star Break, with Young on a year.
His most able teammate has been John Collins, who as a forward, spaces the floor as well, creating driving lanes for Trae to exploit. An able shooting guard like Kevin Huerter has also helped increase floor spacing for them. They look like a team ready to push for the playoffs soon, irrespective of the offseason this year.
Final Verdict
Even though Luka Doncic seems to be a bit more talented and more physically dominant than Trae Young, Young's skills on the ball and his 3 point shooting is something that Doncic is currently unable to match at a consistent level.
Young's franchise has already surrounded him with a bunch of role players and players who are developing into future stars that may end up defining what this franchise will do and where they finish.
Doncic is still very much the only fit player for the Mavericks that has been performing for them on a nightly basis. Porzingis has been out for the season and his Achilles injury is a very difficult one to recover from. The Mavericks need to do a lot to make sure Doncic is surrounded by players that he can lead to a title.
As far as the discussions for Rookie of the Year are concerned, Doncic's performances in the start of the season, which led the Mavericks into playoff spots, before a trade for Porzingis hampered their ambitions. Doncic has still performed at an elite level, surpassing all expectations set for him.
His readiness for the game at the NBA level was underestimated and while Trae has performed really well for Hawks, being an elite facilitator as well as a top quality scoring option for them, there are a few more loopholes in his game than in Doncic's game.
Trae Young has shown the ability to take over the game in the dying moments of the game and come up clutch for the Hawks and putting them over the finish line, something Doncic has shown flashes of, but has not made it a part of his game yet. Still, Luka Doncic deserves to win the Rookie of the Year award.
Guess the Lakers players!
