The Hawks season is set to begin on Wednesday when they open play against the Rockets. Hawks guard Trae Young is ready to take the lessons he learned from the team’s early playoff exit last year and use it as fuel to help propel the team to a better finish.
Below is a quick Q&A with the Hawks’ guard.
Q: How have you continued adjusting to life as a father and how that’s been going?
A: It’s been good. I mean, it’s been really good. It’s an adjustment period, I mean, it’s been a fun type of adjustment. So it’s been great, though.
Q: What surprised you about your son since he’s been born?
A: Just just how fast he’s growing and how fast the time goes like, when you have a son. The longest time I was away was in Abu Dhabi. So that was that was sad. But other than that it’s been crazy how fast they grow.
Q: Are you able to stay in touch with him a little bit?
A: Yeah, on FaceTime.
Q: At the end of last season, you mentioned kind of how that series with Miami was going to be the adversity that you guys kind of pushed through. Has that perspective changed? Or do you still see it as kind of the right turning point for you?
A: Yeah, I mean, we’ll see. I think it could be. I definitely feel like every time you lose, you can learn lessons, as you experience different things. So, I think sometimes you got to go through certain things. I mean, it could be this is the thing we had to go through to get to the top. But who knows? I mean, you got to wait for the season to play out.
Q: And I mean, how are you able to use it as fuel throughout the offseason and your training sessions and everything?
A: You don’t want to end on a bad note. You don’t want to end playing. The way I played I don’t play that way usually, ever, but not having to my bigs and having some things that didn’t go our way. I ended up playing the way I did. So it’s kind of tough playing that way, and then having to sit out somewhere and wait, it’s just you just want to get ready to play again.
Q: What adjustments did the early exit force you to make?
A: We went and got some new pieces. It forces you to get some more guys that can help whenever they’re doubling or just forcing their whole defense strictly toward you. We added some new pieces. I mean, I think that’s a big adjustment.
Q: What has your reaction been to fans being so excited about seeing you engaged on the defensive end in preseason?
A: Yeah it’s been good. I mean, defending is all about effort and energy.
Q: How has Dejounte Murray’s presence maybe motivated you a little bit more on that? And in some ways, too.
A: I mean, you don’t necessarily have to motivate. I mean, you want to play good. So you just want to win, when you want to win, you’re gonna give effort on both sides.
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