Yahoo Sports With Hawks season likely over, Trae Young drops 43 points in Oklahoma basketball league
The NBA is closing in on how it will return to action after pausing the season due to the coronavirus, but that didn’t stop Trae Young from playing organized basketball again.
The Atlanta Hawks star played possibly his first organized basketball game in months on Wednesday when suited up for Oklahoma City’s Skinz League, a basketball competition that usually features several current and former college basketball players and even a few pros.
It didn’t take long for Young to start doing Trae Young things again.
One of Young’s first possessions in organized basketball since the NBA shut down, not bad: https://t.co/PwsgrYyqnp pic.twitter.com/FxK1vhpOIS
— Vic Reynolds (@vicareynolds) June 4, 2020
He later hit a deep 3-pointer straight out of his usual NBA arsenal.
Trae Young, hooper pic.twitter.com/ZM7YekUj1p
— Vic Reynolds (@vicareynolds) June 4, 2020
Young reportedly ended up scoring 43 of his team’s 88 points. That’s a bit better than the previous display we had seen from Young during the NBA hiatus, his upset loss to Chauncey Billups in the league’s horse competition.
Whether or not the NBA would want its players competing in games in crowded gymnasiums with various other players is unclear. The league instructed players over a month ago to not use any training facilities other than their own team’s.
Even as sports start returning and planning to return, the threat of the coronavirus remains. The Oklahoma State Department of Health reported 113 new COVID-19 cases across the state the same day as Young’s game.
However, Young likely won’t be endangering the league by taking part because his Hawks currently sit in second-to-last place in the Eastern Conference, well below the threshold through which teams are being reportedly selected for inclusion in the league’s Orlando plan.
Under the reported plan, the 16 NBA teams currently slotted for playoff spots plus six more teams within striking distance of the eighth seed will be invited to Orlando. There, they would play out part of their remaining regular season schedule, skipping games against teams that aren’t invited.
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