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Nate McMillan and Trae Young are beefing over treatment for the star’s shoulder injury.
Trae Young has been dealing with a shoulder injury for the Atlanta Hawks, and disagreements over how it should be handled led to the superstar guard staying home for a game on Friday night against the Denver Nuggets. The Hawks beat Denver 117-109 anyway, but the bizarre disagreement between head coach Nate McMillan and Young drew headlines on Sunday as Young prepared to make his return to the lineup against Oklahoma City on Monday.
As the Hawks prepared to take on the Nuggets on Friday, Young was listed as questionable with a shoulder injury. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the drama went down when McMillan wanted Young to go through shootaround before getting treatment for his shoulder. Young just wanted to focus on treatment and didn’t want to participate in shootaround. McMillan reportedly told Young to choose what he wanted to do: either come off the bench, or don’t show up to the game at all. Young chose option No. 2 and was not in the arena for the Hawks’ win.
Some are going to view this as another example of Young beefing with one of his coaches. The Hawks reportedly replaced former head coach Lloyd Pierce with McMillan in part because of Pierce’s icy relationship with Young. It’s easy to think Young has shown a pattern of behavior of not getting along with his head coach.
At the same time, why is McMillan forcing Young to go through shootaround if he has a legitimate injury? It’s understandable that Young would just want to focus on his treatment after dropping 30 points and 14 assists in a win against the Orlando Magic in his previous game.
The Hawks are off to a pretty good start at 13-10 overall. The team had high expectations entering this season after trading three first round draft picks to acquire Dejounte Murray. Just making the playoffs isn’t good enough for Atlanta, they want to go on another deep run like they did in 2021 by making the conference finals.
Young has been awesome to start this year, placing top-10 in the league in scoring (27.8 points per game) and second in the league in assists (9.6 per game). Young is the Hawks’ franchise star — every decision the organization makes revolves around if it will benefit him. McMillan simply is not going to win a power struggle against Young. If Atlanta starts to slide, this situation could quickly come to a head.
