It’s tough to be a smallish guard in modern NBA. If you are one of those and you can’t shoot threes at an elite clip like Step Curry or drive to the basket like John Wall, you might be sentenced to play a secondary role. For several years and iterations of its team, the Atlanta Hawks hoped to go against these odds and build a contender on the foundation of smallish guards that were neither an elite shooter nor driver.
After failing to build a contender with Jeff Teague and then with Dennis Schroeder, they decided to rebuild and develop a team even more dependent on such a player in Trae Young.