Trae has tremendously improved on defensive effort. I notice him work extremely hard to stay in front of the opposing guards these days.
The problem is that the team’s current style also seems to depend a lot on running a lot and trying to play a lot more on transition which is probably also very taxing.
Additionally, Trae always had to work a lot harder for his shots considering how undersized he is.
All this combining make me feel like he is just not used to expending this much effort on both offense and defense.
Previously he did not give this much defensive effort. And the offense was also him just slowly bringing up the ball and then either launching a 3 or driving for a lob/floater.
Maybe his shot will continue to improve as he adapts to this new faster paced style and improves his conditioning more.
63 TS is efficient. I’ve never seen a sub more committed to forcing FG% into every conversation
He has a 13-17 game in there skewing the stats.
He had 3 straight games of 27 pts, 7-19, L 15 points, 4-12, L 22 points, 5-14, L
He wasn’t playing terrible but that’s not efficient my guy.
I promise you I’m a bigger Trae fan than you are, and that’s why I expect more. I’m not happy with a 6 game stretch where half the games he didn’t score well and we fucking lost. Last game he started out 6-8 and ended up 12-31… so until he puts together a string of games shooting over 40% that result in some wins, he’s not back.
If Trae is just a top 25 player then okay that’s cool. I believe he’s top 15 and can be top 10 if he gets his shit together. Do you see what Steph, Luka, SGA, Fox, Hali, are on??
Yeah that’s the kind of production and consistency we need from Trae. We already saw Trae play like that for a whole season in 21-22.
So until he’s playing on that level he’s not back. Don’t hate on me for expecting more out of our franchise guy and my favorite player.