Hawks guard Trae Young has adopted a new offseason routine this year, writes Sarah K. Spencer of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Instead of taking his usual month off, Young was back in the gym a week after Atlanta’s loss to Miami in its first-round series. He’s undertaking a workout regimen that he plans to continue through the NBA Finals, explaining, “because that’s where I want to play.”
“I think it’s gotta be,” Young said. “It’s happened for a lot of the guys who’ve won championships and all the big-time players that’s come before me, throughout this whole league. Everybody has to go through something to push through, to get to that next step. I think this could be that thing.”
The Heat were able to rattle Young by attacking him with multiple defenders, leading to subpar numbers throughout the series. He averaged 15.4 points and 6.2 turnovers in the five games while shooting 31.9% from the field and 18.4% from three-point range.
“I think this is just a learning experience in the early chapter stage of my career that I needed to go through,” Young said. “The Heat did a great job, their defensive schemes, placement, where their guys were, switching it up, making it difficult. Just looking back at some of the mistakes I had, I know I’m going to learn from them, and it’s only going to make me better, and I think that’s a scary thing, if I’m young and I still have a lot to grow from. I think it’s a good thing that I can learn from it.”
There’s more from the Southeast Division:
- Magic big man Bol Bol is continuing rehab work on his injured right foot that required surgery in January, according to Khobi Price of The Orlando Sentinel. Bol wasn’t able to play for Orlando after being acquired in a February deal, and he’ll be a free agent this summer. The Magic can make him restricted by extending a $2.7MM qualifying offer, and it sounds like the team still believes in his future. “Bol’s working very hard,” president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said. “He’s working diligently. He’s working every day. He continues to ramp up. He’s just doing individual work right now. We’re going to be careful with him as we are with everyone to make sure he doesn’t skip steps in his rehabilitation.”
- Speaking as part of the ReAwaken America Tour, Magic forward Jonathan Isaac explained his decision not to get the COVID-19 vaccine, per Johnny Askounis of EuroHoops. “Viewing it, it seemed forced. It seemed that there was so much pressure in doing it,” Isaac said. “I don’t see the wisdom in putting something into my body that’s not going to stop me from getting the virus or transmitting it. That is why I decided to be the only player on my team to not get vaccinated.”
- First-year coach Wes Unseld Jr. has been selected to represent the Wizards at Tuesday’s draft lottery, the team tweeted this week. Washington has a 3% chance of landing the first pick and a 13.9% chance of moving into the top four.
With most of the younger NBA stars so focused on image, using social media to reveal that their heads don’t match their talent, I am super impressed with Young here. He is accountable, respects other teams strategies, and skips Cancun to be in the gym. Not that these guys don’t deserve vacation at all, but I love his willingness to work hard and recognize what he needs to do to get there as a player. So many of these guys talk it, Trae is walking it. I’m a GSW fan so no bias here, just appreciate this young leader for this.
More than any other player, Trae should care about his image a little more. That “hairstyle” is just awful.
2k God Bol Bol
Interesting how a similar percentage of all the world’s nations and races will include a population generously willing to volunteer their bodies to help a struggling new takeover virus survive.
These people’s bodies can also generate new warriors or tactics on the battlefield of immunity against the virus. Hopefully they will find an answer to covid in the ancient way done by apex creatures dealing with viruses, before laboratories.
Instead of being weak links.
“These people’s bodies can also generate new warriors or tactics on the battlefield of immunity against the virus. Hopefully they will find an answer to covid in the ancient way done by apex creatures dealing with viruses, before laboratories. Instead of being weak links.”
Right, because this has worked out SO well with respect to some other viruses and illnesses. Let mother nature be and everything will work itself out. Yes, covid isn’t even in the same conversation as the above but to suggest the natural way is the best way is misleading. For covid it may be, but your general point is off-base.
“Interesting how a similar percentage of all the world’s nations and races will include a population generously willing to volunteer their bodies to help a struggling new takeover virus survive.”
Volunteer is a stretch. The vaccines are safe: full stop. And lord knows most human beings either do worse to their bodies on a regular basis (alcohol, junk food) or would ingest other less-verified substances (supplements, remedies, etc). I don’t see the same level of concern about those things.
The bigger issue is we’ve made the issue of the vaccines far bigger than it ever needed to be. On the one side, you have folks obsessed with “freedom”—-nonsensical given that true freedom doesn’t even exist and due to the safety of the vaccines—and because there will come a time when we are faced with a much worse virus that would absolutely require vaccine mandates. On the other side, you have folks obsessed with the vaccines as some sort of moral mandate despite some of the caveats that Isaac noted. Even now, you have folks up in arms about others not getting the vaccine despite the fact that they aren’t nearly as effective at preventing transmission in recent variants. It’s all misplaced and silly in the end and a microcosm of the partisanship that currently plagues the US.
I got the vaccine because at the time the vaccines were decent at reducing the likelihood of infection and they helped prevent severe infection as unlikely as that may be for a person of my age and health. That’s it. Wasn’t a big deal then and is not a big deal now. And I ain’t no guinea pig—there’s a reason I waited a few months to get vaccinated after being first eligible. I don’t feel the need to die on the hill of “freedom” against the vaccines when there are about a million other more pressing issues that would be worthy of such a stand. To be distracted by such a worthless crusade is a luxury neither I nor the world has.
Ideally both laoratory and natural methods should be used, prioritizing the lab using science. But to use either way properly takes more organization then what societies can come up with. The world is a mix of vaxxers living side-by-side to non-vaxxers, when ideally they should be separate, and non-vaxxers send their kids to school.
Various rationales for not vaxxing get floated, but I think all these reasons given are cover for a more primitive urge that has worked for human evolution, indeed for all animals being able to ward off antigens. “We”—our internal systems— don’t wall off invading threats as much as “we” learn their weakness and swarm it on a micro level.
Proof of this happening is unlikely… But how else could life exist until a century or so ago? The only other defense is a mass kill-off that leaves mutants.
Best proof is the illogic of antivaxxers! I keep hearing, aquisition and transmission of covid is unaffected by vaxxing. But even if true, there are three relevant rates, not two… The fight-off rate also matters… yet this is never noted, like it’s never thought of. (And it is hard to tell what is meant exactly with words like resistance, which could be either catching it or fighting it off.) Talk of freedom is bull. The real reason is way deep, what has kept life going in the absence of science, but is hard to speak of.
The usage of intellectual & iffy reasons would be expected to vary culture to culture. Yet all cultures (except maybe Iowa lol) have a similar rate, like it’s a human thing rather than a thought-y thing.
Seriously: Iowa (for vaxxers) and Nebraska (for non-vaxxers) should be walled off to investigate the defensive strategems. Some people would have to move. If there was something worthy of learning, that would highlight it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now; Trae Young has improved more as basketball player in the NBA from the time he was drafted than anyone I’ve ever seen improve at anything in my entire life. For that, he has my respect, even though I think he benefits from officiating at times. I also usually appreciate certain irrational confidence from players, but I also think he tries way too hard to be a heel, and would like to see him just be more consistently focused. Not suggesting he should stop having fun; I just think I would like to see him try to do more things without the ball, and on defense, than complaining to officials or celebrating