The Atlanta Hawks have yet again thrown the first punch in a potentially competitive series, all thanks to Trae Young's 48-point peformance. Young joins LeBron James and Kobe Bryant as the only 22-year olds to score at least 48 points in a playoff game.
"They have real good defenders, what I respect about Trae is that he's always going to stay aggressive," Atlanta Hawks head coach Nate McMillan said in a postgame interview. "He continued to stay aggressive and take his shots, and tonight those shots were falling for him."
The Hawks front-court duo of Clint Capela and John Collins played a prominent part in the Hawks win tonight, Capela and Collins pulled down 34 rebounds combined, the Milwaukee Bucks as a team grabbed just 45.
"They were very big, very big in the fourth quarter, big the whole game," Young said. "They made a lot of plays down the stretch, Clint for sure on the defensive end and rebounding, [Collins] with his scoring and he hit a big three in front of [Milwaukee's] bench."
The Hawks poise has been nothing but impressive this entire playoffs, fairly unusual for a team so young.
"I've felt we built ourselves to be able to play on the road and I've told them that they're built for this," McMillan said. "They really just kept their poise, kept their composure, for a full 48 minutes, which is what is required in these playoffs games."
Many counted the Hawks out before the series commenced but Atlanta has continued to show how talented their young core really is.
"We got weapons too, I believe in this team too, they got some good pieces and really talented people but we do too," Young stated.