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USA TODAY Sports

A late Atlanta run made the 112-99 score look halfway respectable, but the Atlanta Hawks were more or less bludgeoned by the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of their first-round series on Saturday. 

Nothing went right for the Hawks, starting with Trae Young, who finished with 16 points and five turnovers on 5-of-18 shooting, including 1 of 5 from 3-point land. 

Dating back to last postseason when he was brutally bad in a five-game loss to the Miami Heat, Young is now 8 for his last 49 from 3 in the postseason. Factoring in volume, that is the worst 3-point shooting run over a seven-game playoff stretch in NBA history, per ESPN. 

Young's name has been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. The Ringer's Kevin O'Connor reported that Atlanta's front office has the "green light" from ownership to consider trading Young, and most believe there is real merit to that possibility. 

Young has not embraced any sort of off-ball movement or shown one bit of defensive pride. The Celtics attacked him in Game 1, as all teams do in game of any significance, and his stationary off-ball instincts allow a team like the Celtics to hone in on him with waves of pick-and-roll defenders without the threat of relocation. 

If Young's 3-point shots are not falling (which they often aren't; even in 2021 when he became a playoff darling he was a 31% 3-point shooter), and he's not constantly getting into the paint and creating lobs at the rim for Atlanta's bigs, he doesn't do anything else on the floor that helps his team win. 

I've written about this extensively. Dating even back to college, Young has never been anything close to the elite shooter that his marksman reputation suggests. Way back in 2021 I was writing about Young being an average shooter who mistakes himself for Steph Curry. I took an unbelievable amount of heat for this, and yet it has proven true every step of the way since. 

And it's still proving true. It showed again on Saturday, as it has over his last two postseasons, that Young is not a reliable 3-point shooter with respect to the kinds of shots he takes. If he moved and let his gravity work for his teammates, it wouldn't be so detrimental. But if he's just going to dribble create and hoist up 3s, he needs to make them at a far better rate that he has so far in his career.