The Atlanta Hawks’ offense could be special in the near future, as their two stars have the potential to be one of the greatest passing duos in NBA history.
We all know about Trae Young’s passing. His 11.6 assists a night led the league last season, with Young holding the highest mark in four years. He also led the league in rim assists per 100 possessions and was in the 99th percentile of potential assists per 100. Despite being a dynamic scoring threat, Young has an elite ability to process the game, enabling him to switch between attacking and creating for others on a dime.
Young’s brilliance as a passer, however, has diverted attention from Jalen Johnson’s skill in this department. Johnson has assumed lead playmaking responsibilities this season with Young’s injury leave, and surprisingly, he has approached Young’s otherworldly 2024-25 playmaking numbers.
In eerily similar fashion to Young, Johnson was in the 100th percentile in both rim assists and potential assists per 100 this season at the power forward postion, per databallr. While his 7.3 assists per game place him at just ninth, this is still a remarkable leap from the young Hawk.
No team has had two passers of this caliber since the Harden-CP3 Rockets
The Houston Rockets of the late 2010s starred Chris Paul and James Harden as their guard duo, two of the best passers of all time. They were a dangerous team on paper, racking up regular-season wins behind monstrous stat lines from their lead guards. But they played a brand of basketball that regressed in the playoffs, and Houston left that era empty-handed.
Harden and Paul are both known for their ball-dominant style of play. Over Paul’s three years in Houston, neither player elevated the other. Each star simply took turns running spread pick and roll, rather than forming a cohesive offense that maximizes their teammates through passing and motion.
Young and Johnson must avoid this trap at all costs. Both players are exciting creators for themselves and their teammates, but neither is good enough to be the system on a championship contender. Instead, Quin Snyder should look to involve both players in off-ball actions and keep the pass-heavy style of play that has driven Atlanta to the fifth seed in the East.
This raises the question: how can a player like Trae Young work in this system? We haven’t seen a lower-usage version of Trae since his high school days, but he has the basketball IQ and traits that make him a potentially successful off-ball player.
Young was often compared to Steph Curry as a prospect. While Young is not Curry, the Warriors star laid out the blueprint on how to succeed in this archetype: create open three point attempts off the ball. If he can emulate Curry as opposed to Harden, who knows how high the ceiling for this Hawks roster is?