Being the smallest guy on the basketball court is a rough life. You’re right at elbow height, so any time you go for that contested rebound, you could be leaving the court with some missing teeth. Everyone thinks they can block your shot, and they’re probably right.

If you want to stay on the court among the bigs, you need to find advantages any way you can. You need to be good at being small. You can use your foot speed to your advantage, taking more steps to help you change direction faster, or you can sit three feet behind the 3-point line instead of right on it, so that pesky, long-armed defender closing out to you can’t get a fingertip on your shot.

There are many ways that a player can use his compact frame to his advantage in basketball, and Trae Young already has mastered many of them. He’s perfecting the art of being small while carrying a large offensive burden for Atlanta, posting the league’s third-highest usage rate at 36.1 percent, which is the highest usage rate for a player his age or younger in NBA history. He isn’t just surviving in the NBA at his size, he’s thriving. Let’s take a closer look at how Young has made himself the NBA’s smallest superhero for the Hawks, who need every one of his superpowers to remain competitive.

When you think of a player’s physical gifts, you generally think of things like vertical, standing reach or wingspan, but other attributes often go unnoticed. Trae’s athleticism might not jump off the screen in traditional ways, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t blessed with God-given talent.

Trae uses short, quick steps, and often times his feet barely leave the ground at all. More steps mean more opportunity to change directions. Being able to chop your feet like this is certainly something you can work on and improve at, but he’s 22 years old and already able to do this? Take a closer look at step 10 in particular. Step 10 is a hard plant, which works even better because he leans toward his plant foot, further selling his unwilling dance partner on the drive attempt.

This wasn’t some predetermined set of steps to get in position (more on that next). This is Young playing on the fly, using his exceptional ability to accelerate, then decelerate, rinsing and repeating until he has earned the advantage.

Watch here as Trae sets the defender up with a skip step and a head fake. Once he sells that he’s going to use the screen, Joel Embiid starts to hedge, and Josh Richardson goes over the screen. This is the optimal time for Trae to reject the screen, planting his foot hard and crossing over, which was his plan all along.

Part of being good at being small is being armed with knowledge about how your opponent wants to defend you before you go to battle with them, and plays like this are born from attention to detail in the film room. Instead of dribbling into trouble, Trae creates an opportunity for a clean pull-up instead.

Once again, watch for the short, quick steps that give him more opportunities to change direction. But this time his footwork is much more deliberate than the possession against LaMarcus Aldridge. Trae uses far fewer, far more efficient steps to create an open pull-up look for himself. He can do that because he understands exactly how many steps it’ll take him to get to his spot.

I like to think of skill sets as residing within a toolbox. Does the player know which tool to use, and when? Trae has a lot of tools to choose from, and he usually knows when to use the most appropriate one for any given situation.

Watching Trae operate in the pick and roll, it’s hard to believe he’s only a second-year player. His vision, his patience and his execution are years beyond his age. He seems to understand his own scouting report and comes prepared to counter. He knows teams are going to force him left because he doesn’t operate as well with his left hand. Watch how savvy he is on this play.

First, he rejects the screen with a hard plant, a head fake and a crossover. Next, he slices back in front of Bruce Brown to cut off his angle. Then, he uses a classic small guy move. Stick to a guy’s hip on your gather to the basket, lean into him for a quick bump, then extend away from the contact and use the separation you’ve just created to finish at the rim, hopefully drawing an and-one.

Craftsmanship only can get a player his size so far. Teams know that blitzing him is an effective strategy for minimizing his success in pick-and-rolls.

When the ball screen comes, the man being screened will go over the top of it and stay attached to Trae, while the defending big ditches the screener early to trap the ball handler. This eliminates the angle for the pocket pass and the overhead pass because Trae isn’t big enough to get the ball over two defenders when they’re that close to him. Often in these situations, he is forced to pass to the wing and hope they can still take advantage by swinging the ball quickly. Sometimes it works, but that’s where defenses want Atlanta to try and beat them. Take the ball out of Trae’s hands and force the other limited playmakers on the team to create.

This is similar to how teams would try to blitz Steph Curry, but the difference between Curry and Trae Young in these situations is … Draymond Green. Draymond is pivotal in busting that strategy because he’s a fantastic playmaker from the short roll.

When Steph is blitzed by two defenders, he will quickly pass to Draymond, briefly giving his teammates a four-on-three advantage until the blitzing big can get back into the play. Unfortunately, the Hawks don’t have anyone in that Draymond role to make teams pay for blitzing Trae, so they’re going to continue being blitzed until they find a consistent counter-attack.

Trae’s skill set is illustrious but not yet complete, and he will become even more deadly once he masters how and when to use his left hand. Too often Trae will drive left, then force his way back to his right hand, giving the defense an angle to contest his shot.

He has an angle to get to the rim and finish with the left-handed layup but opts for a right-handed layup instead. If he had used his left hand, he would be able to keep his shoulders between the defender and the ball, creating some space for himself to finish while staying balanced. He tries to go under Al Horford’s contesting arm with the right-hand, right-side reverse attempt — another favorite move of shorter scorers — but Horford sniffs it out, although the value of putting pressure on the rim still wins the play in the form of an easy put-back.

Trae is too small to not use every opportunity to create space to finish near the basket. This right-handed shot will get blocked or contested nearly every time. If Trae were a bit more willing and able to finish with his left hand, he could improve on his paltry 30th percentile ranking in non-post-up shot attempts around the basket to become an even more dangerous offensive threat. And, while we’re airing grievances, he has a somewhat signature behind-the-back bounce pass to hit the popping big that doesn’t have enough velocity on it. Those extra moments are the difference between an open jumper or a contested shot attempt.

The toolbox isn’t fully stocked yet. His superpowers have not completely matured.

But it’s hard not to fall in love with Trae Young’s game. When he’s hot, he’s a Human League Pass Alert. Sure, every few games he’ll go something like 9-for-30 with seven turnovers, but if he makes three of those six baskets in a row, you’re on the edge of your seat wondering whether or not this is the game he hits 10 3s. Imagine an offense where Trae is paired with another initiator so he can receive a reasonable amount of catch-and-shoot opportunities, where he’s in the 90th percentile. What if he had a playmaking big who could punish teams for blitzing? What if he had both?

Trae Young isn’t surrounded by ideal personnel to maximize his impact, and it has led to one of the league’s biggest offensive burdens being placed on one of its smallest sets of shoulders. And the proficiency with which he carries that weight is quickly making him one of the game’s giants.

(Photo: Garrett Ellwood / NBAE via Getty Images)