Trae Young has built his entire persona around trolling New York Knicks fans. That was fine when he was hitting daggers at Madison Square Garden in the 2021 playoffs. It is significantly less fine now, when the Knicks have Jalen Brunson and the Hawks are trying to figure out what their team even is.
Young’s latest attempt was a social media post that appeared to mock Knicks fans. It did not land. What actually happened is that Knicks fans, who have spent the last four years watching Brunson turn into a genuine All-NBA guard, dogpiled Young with reminders that his team has not been past the second round since the trolling started.
This is the problem when your identity is being a villain. It works when you are winning. It stops working the second the receipts start piling up. Brunson has been the better player for three straight seasons. The Knicks have been the better team. The Hawks have not made a Conference Finals since the pandemic.
Young is still an elite offensive talent. He led the league in assists last year. He is still a top-five NBA point guard by most reasonable measures. But the villain act has a shelf life, and that shelf life is running out.
The Hawks are in a strange spot. They just made the Play-In and got bounced. Dyson Daniels is developing into one of the best young defensive guards in the league. Onyeka Okongwu has replaced Clint Capela as the starting center. Zaccharie Risacher looks like a solid rotation forward. There is a real young core here.
What there is not is a clear identity, and that is on Trae. Atlanta has spent five straight offseasons trying to figure out whether to build around him or trade him. The trade rumors have quieted down for now, mostly because his contract is unwieldy and no obvious market has emerged. But every time Young does something like this, it becomes easier for the front office to justify moving on.
The Brunson comparison is unfair in one sense. Brunson gets to play in New York with better shooting, better coaching, and a fanbase that treats him like royalty. Young plays in Atlanta, where the fanbase is famously fickle and the roster changes every summer.
But Brunson also does not spend his summer trolling opposing fans on social media. He plays his games, wins them, and lets his production do the trash-talking. That has worked.
Young’s version worked for one summer, five years ago. It has not worked since. If he wants to be more than a viral moment, he might need to spend less time on X and more time figuring out how to lift Atlanta out of the 7-10 seed rut he has become synonymous with.
The trolling is not the problem. The losing is. Once you stop winning, the trolling starts sounding like coping.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
