Trae Young finished with 25 points and seven assists but he did not play well, as most glaringly evidenced by his 10 turnovers. Game 3 will take place on Friday night in Atlanta as the Hawks look to avoid being pushed to the brink of their postseason lives. Jimmy Butler was fantastic on Tuesday night finishing the Heat win with a game-high 45 points and now they are in the driver's seat in this series as a result. The Miami Heat are two wins away from a berth in the Eastern Conference semifinals. We'll see what kind of fight the Hawks have left. So now Atlanta heads home for what is essentially a must-win Game 3 on Friday. The Hawks aren't going to win very many games when Young shoots 20 percent from 3 and commits 10 turnovers, especially not against a No. But one of the biggest leaps Young has made has been his reduction in ill-advised 3-pointers, and on Tuesday, flustered and rushed, he jacked up a bunch of bad 3s.Īgain, he finished 2-of-10 from beyond the arc. He found some jump-shot rhythm with some mid-rangers. Young did get into the paint more effectively in Game 2, finishing with 25 points and seven assists while converting eight of his 10 shots from inside the arc. Miami is mixing up coverages, sporadically springing traps. The Heat are all over him with size and switches and he's seeing bodies sinking down into his driving lanes at all times. Young's turnovers were a mixture of his own sloppiness and soft/lazy passes and Miami's relentless pressure. Miami is a better team at every other spot on the floor and in every other facet of the game. It's a lot to put on Young that he has to be brilliant for Atlanta to have a chance, but that's the reality. There was an error processing your subscription. No way does Atlanta keep this game at all close without Bogi. Bogdan Bogdanovic hit a bunch of really tough shots - 12-of-18 overall and 5-of-10 from 3 - to finish with 29 points. Frankly, that Atlanta was even close down the stretch of this game with Young playing like that was a small miracle.Įarly in the game, a lot of weird caroms went Atlanta's way that turned into "look what I found" buckets. He finished with eight points on 1-for-12 shooting in Game 1, and had had 10 turnovers and shots 2-for-10 from 3 in Game 2. Suffice it to say, Young has not been dominant offensively in this series. In my preview of this series, I talked about the Trae Young offense-defense tradeoff and how it can only come out as a positive for Atlanta if Young dominates offensively, because his defense completely drowns an Atlanta defense that is already barely treading water. The Hawks are nothing short of a dreadful defense. That trend appears to be continuing.īefore we anoint Butler as the closer the Heat need, however, let's keep in mind who he's doing this against. He shot 35 percent from deep in the bubble and so far this postseason he's 5-or-9 from 3.īutler knocked down four of his seven 3s on Tuesday and, generally speaking, his aggression as a shooter has consistently gone up in the postseason with Miami. Interesting note: Butler has been a horrendous 3-point shooter during the regular season in his time with the Heat (24 percent in his first two seasons and 23 percent this year), but he's been much better in the playoffs.
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