Anyone who tells you they are super confident about what type of NBA player Trae Young will be is either stupid or a liar. That is true to some degree with every prospect, but none more so than Young.

There may be no harder task in NBA draft analysis than predicting who will be able to succeed as a perimeter initiator. Particularly, small and non-traditional initiators are a landmine of historical draft mistakes. Check this table out.

The above is a collection of point guards from the last 10 years worth of NBA drafts (and Steve Nash) who I think are worth comparing to Trae Young. Generally, those players are all smallish, high-usage guards, but there is some flexibility in the grouping.

There are two main takeaways I have from that table: 1. It is extremely difficult to augur NBA success based off NCAA production for this player type. 2. How in the F—— world did Jonny Flynn go above Steph Curry!?

The two stats that seem to have the most meaningful correlation (I’m just eyeballing this not actually running regressions) with NBA success are steals and rebounds. Trae Young is about average in steals and one of the worst in rebounds. But even then, Nash is not impressive in either department, and Lillard’s steal numbers are identical to Young’s. More importantly, trying to figure out exact trends or indicators on such a noisy and small sample runs serious risk of overfitting.

All that being said, there does seem to be a relationship between strength of statistical profile and NBA success. This is good news for Trae Young. Despite his somewhat concerning steal and rebound volume, his overall package of shooting, volume creation for himself and others, efficiency, and age at time of performance are all some of the best in the group.

On the net, I look at this table and feel considerably more positive about Trae Young’s NBA prospects. Yes, he turned the ball over a ton, but the two next highest were Nash and Curry. His combination of assisting others, three-point bombing, and efficient scoring are truly unprecedented, especially given his age. However, I do see two main arguments against Trae Young that could arise.

1. Size and quickness are the differentiators.

I grouped the list so it roughly goes back-and-forth between players who exceeded NBA expectations and players who underwhelmed (aside from the last two). The players who “exceeded” are Steph Curry, Kemba Walker, Isaiah Thomas, Steve Nash, CJ McCollum, and Damian Lillard. Of that group, Curry, Nash, McCollum, and Lillard are all 6’3 or taller, and Walker and Thomas are two of the quickest players in the entire NBA.

Maybe Occam’s Razor suggests you either need to be on the tall side or outlier quick to succeed as this player-type? Unfortunately, this seems overly simplistic. Are we really supposed to believe that a single-inch of height is what separated Nash and Curry from Jimmer and Cam Payne? I do think this table supports the idea that relative size and elite quickness are important attributes to look for within this player type, but it would be stretching the evidence to say this is a significant knock against Young.

Moreover, Young’s package of size and quicks might elevate him above the subset of players who have “failed.” At 6’2, Young isn’t quite as big as Curry/Nash/Lillard, but he is significantly taller than the 6’0 Burke/Augustin. At the same time, his quickness and functional athleticism are a clear notch above the 6’2 Payne/Fredette. If he were smaller or slower there would be real cause for concern. Thankfully, Young’s conjunction of physical tools and athleticism is not overly damning.

2. Full season data ignores the fact that Young got “figured out” in the second-half of the year.

Looking at Young’s stats across the entire season does not accurately capture the wildly up-and-down year he had. One could split it at other points, but here is a simple comparison between Young’s first 16 and latter 16 games.

All players tend to perform worse against tougher conference schedules, but Young’s drop-off was particularly severe. His efficiency from three and two ranges fell dramatically, and his assists and free throw attempts dropped considerably. The only things that increased were turnovers and fouls.

As the narrative goes, Young’s performance cratered once teams started guarding him with bigger wings and trapping him in pick-and-roll. Thus, against the length and athleticism of NBA defenses, he is going to be incapable of creating efficiently.

Typically, I caution against reading too much into fluctuations in performance across the season. Players experience hot & cold streaks, and their full season sample is almost always more predictive than a selected subset. Some of Young’s success at the beginning of the year was certainly good shooting variance, and some of his struggles in the second-half were just bad luck. Still, Young’s decline was so dramatic that it is potentially worthy of greater emphasis.

However, the idea that Young suddenly started getting shut-down by longer wings also is an oversimplification. Rather than just putting longer wings on him, teams started gearing their entire defensive game-plan around him.

Here is one example my colleague Cole Zwicker tweeted back in January (around when Trae’s struggles began):

OSU showing Trae all of the bodies to end the half pic.twitter.com/kGSWFQNsmZ — Cole Zwicker (@colezwicker) January 4, 2018

This is an extreme example, but it is representative of the trend in how defenses began to guard Young. Opponents realized that Oklahoma simply did not have the secondary creators to punish them for totally selling out on Young. Teams aggressively put their help defenders in the gaps on each wing, knowing that Oklahoma’s wings weren’t good enough shooters or creators to take advantage.

That’s not to say Oklahoma’s complementary players are complete scrubs. Kameron McGusty, Christian James, and Brady Manek are all capable shooters, while Kristian Doolittle and Rashard Odomes can attack the basket. There is some credence to the idea that Young’s ball-dominance caused his teammates performance to regress. Specifically, McGusty, Doolittle, and Odomes all posted significantly worse BPM’s than the prior year.

However, that is more a byproduct of their specific player-types than a real problem with Young. All three of those guys are catch-and-hold types. When the ball swings to them on the wing they tend to take a second to think before trying to go and hunt their own shot. Those players can be effective in the right role, but they are not synergistic with a player like Young. Furthermore, their inability to create for others in the flow of the offense also hurt Young as much as it hurt them.

Young got few opportunities to work off-the-ball for easier shots, and even when team’s loaded up on him, he couldn’t trust his teammates to decisively break down scrambled defenses. As a result, teams loaded up on in him in coverage in a nearly unparalleled way.

The reason I’m spending so much time on this is because it really is an important distinction to make in the evaluation of Young.

If teams did figure out how to stymie Young in a way that will also apply at the NBA-level, he is not all that great a prospect. Alternatively, if Young’s struggles were due to an unprecedented amount of defensive attention and a supporting cast ill-equipped to both take advantage of that attention and put Young in positions to succeed, there is significantly more room for optimism. Based on my watching of Oklahoma, I lean towards the latter explanation.

This article is not meant to convince anyone that Trae Young is absolutely going to be a stud in the NBA. As the initial table should suggest, predicting the success of small initiator types is not an easy game. Rather, I hope to outline very realistic scenarios where Young becomes one of the NBA’s premier guards.

Exactly where to rank him comes down to how likely his upside is, how acceptable his defense could be, and how much to weigh upside in the draft. Those are all difficult questions. For me, I believe in Trae Young when I watch him play. I see someone with rare basketball instincts and vision, superlative range, and the quicks and shake to create space for himself.

Since he compares favorably with past players of a similar type, I would be willing to bet on him early in the draft. Like second overall early. The chance for him to be somewhere along the Lillard–Nash spectrum of effectiveness is just too good to pass up. I get it if others don’t feel the same way, but they should be very scared about missing out on him.