National Basketball Association

Trae Young dances over Milwaukee Bucks in Game 1, elevating his NBA status

Published Jun. 24, 2021 12:38 p.m. ET

All it took was a slight shimmy of the shoulders.

With 2:26 left in the third quarter of Game 1 of the NBA's Eastern Conference finals, Trae Young crossed up Jrue Holiday to then find himself wide open beyond the arc, with plenty of time to not only line up his 3-pointer but add some sauce to the windup.

The reaction was immediate, from "NBA on TNT" commentator Reggie Miller repeating, "No he didn't" in astonishment, to some of Young's fellow NBA players on social media.

Following the 116-113 win for the Hawks over the Milwaukee Bucks, the 22-year-old addressed his decision to shimmy on the open look.

"I had a lot of time," Young said with a smile in his postgame news conference.

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Young had plenty of reasons to be smiling in the aftermath of Game 1.

Behind his playoff career-high 48 points, his Hawks went on the road and swiped away home-court advantage for the third straight series.

Not only that, but Young enshrined himself among Hawks royalty, falling just two points short of Bob Pettit and Dominique Wilkins' all-time franchise record of 50 points scored in a playoff game.

As FOX Sports NBA writer Yaron Weitzman put it in his postgame column, Young was the best player on the floor, despite going up against a two-time league MVP in Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The accolades for Young continued into Thursday, too.

On "Undisputed," Skip Bayless said Young is boosting the profile in the NBA amid some thrilling playoff series, even with the absences of traditional megastars like LeBron James.

From a coach's perspective, P.J. Carlesimo, who was a head coach in the league for nine seasons, said it's astonishing that Young flew under the radar for so long.

"He's amazing, and we may someday say, ‘Guess what? Let’s compare him to Steph Curry,'" Carlesimo said on ESPN.

And Nick Wright of "First Things First" said the question of whether or not Young qualifies as a "superstar" rather than a "star" has been put to bed.

"What we are seeing does not have precedent," Wright said. "A player this young, in his playoff debut, doing this through more than a dozen games now. … If he's not a superstar, then we've only got two or three superstars. He is without question a superstar and I can't believe what he's doing."

However, Chris Broussard cautioned to pump the breaks on making that pronouncement quite yet.

"I'm still not ready to declare him a superstar," Broussard said. "A star? Yes. A superstar? No. … He has to do this for a sustained period of time."

Chris Broussard: 'What Trae Young is doing is unprecedented, but it's too soon to call him a superstar' ' FIRST THINGS FIRST

Hear Chris Broussard lay out what he needs to see from Trae Young before he can name him a superstar.

Superstar or not, Young is certainly entertaining.

Even his current adversary, Antetokounmpo, admitted that Young's shimmy injected some fun into the game.

"He's just having fun. He's enjoying the game," Antetokounmpo said after the contest. "Obviously, I wouldn't want him to make the shot, but he's having fun. He's enjoying the game. We're going to do the same as a team. We're going to have fun. We're going to enjoy the game. … I might mean mug. It's just part of the game. It's nothing. You can't take that personally."

With at least three more games to go in this Eastern Conference finals series, there will be plenty of room for fun ⁠— especially for whichever team shimmies into the NBA Finals.

So far, Young is winning the dance battle.

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