Trae Young Credits Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving for Opening Doors for Undersized Guards in the NBA

6’6.3 was the average height in the NBA in 2021, the lowest it has been in more than four decades. The average height of an NBA point guard was 6’2.4. The position is usually allotted to the smallest players on the team, but they have the most specialized role on the court.

When Trae Young, at 6’1, entered the league in 2018, he didn’t feel completely out of place despite the presence of much bigger players around him. During a recent appearance on Podcast P with Paul George, the Hawks star thanked Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving for paving the way for smaller guards like him.

Young thinks Curry and Irving repeatedly playing crucial roles in the last few NBA Finals series before his Draft made undersized guards like him more acceptable and even desirable.

Trae told PG and his crew, “I came in at the right time. Steph had just won a couple of championships. When a smaller guard is winning championships, the outlook is very different. Even Kyrie was on them teams with Bron, going to the Finals and he’s a smaller guard.”

In a way, Trae got lucky that Steph and Kyrie were dominant in the league at the time. Both players are 6’2, only an inch taller than the three-time All-Star.

So, in that timeline when Trae entered the league, people didn’t discount his potential right off the bat due to his size.

While Steph and Kyrie paved the way for him as a PG in the league, Trae was a different player altogether when he was coming up. He talked about a major switch that he made in his career early on in his career.

Trae Young talks about being a wing player before he became a point guard

For shorter players, switching between positions on the court becomes much more difficult. Despite being pretty undersized in high school, Young used to play as a Wing.

Trae said during the podcast, “It’s crazy because I was on the wing, growing up, like, 10th grade is when I moved over to being a point guard because I really wasn’t comfortable with my handles.”

As per rankings by ESPN, Scout.com, and Rivals.com, Young was one of the best prospects in the 2017 recruiting class. He was dubbed as the second-best point guard in the class by ESPN and although that might seem like a lot of pressure for teenager, Trae has lived up to those expectations.

In the past six years, he has been slowly and steadily carving his own identity while representing the Atlanta franchise.