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SALT LAKE CITY – Very rarely is a first-round draft pick asked to participate in a third straight offseason of summer league ball.
Even rarer is a first-round draft pick only 20 years old while entering his third summer in the NBA.
James Young might be the rarest of breeds, because he can put a checkmark in both of those boxes.
His name is symbolic of his age. Although Young has been around for a while, he is still very much young. The swingman, who is entering his third NBA season, will not reach the legal age of drinking in the United States until Aug. 16.
Think about that for a moment.
And now think about how much has been expected of this kid since Boston chose him with the 17th overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft.
The odds have been stacked up against this youngster since he came into the league. At first, he was too raw to garner playing time. Then the Celtics quickly rose into a playoff contender, and it was nearly impossible to break into the rotation.
Yet now, three summers into his career and still at the raw age of 20, Young is beginning to show signs of growth.
Two games are in the books for the Boston Celtics during their three-game slate in the Utah Jazz Summer League. Thus far, Young has not only been the sharpest shooter on the Celtics, but in the entire league.
Young finished Tuesday’s 89-82 win over the Jazz having made four of his five 3-point attempts on the night. That effort took his 3-point total in Salt Lake City to 6-for-7 over the course of two games, tying him for the most makes in the league, and he needed three fewer attempts to reach that number than his co-leader, Bryn Forbes of the Spurs (6-of-10).
Clearly, Young, who has made only 23 of his 92 career 3s during the regular season, is in a different place with his shot. He is confident in his release, thanks in large part to the effort he has given behind closed doors.
“I’ve been putting a lot of work in,” he said after leading the Celtics with 17 points Tuesday night. “So it’s just starting to show off and I’m just going to keep working until I’m where I need to be.”
Pressed further as to why his confidence is so high when the ball now leaves his hands, Young reiterated his work ethic.
“Just because I know how much work I’ve been putting in,” he said. “It’s starting to pay off.”
The Celtics have watched Young shoot behind closed doors for the entirety of his two-plus years in the league. Everyone, from Danny Ainge to Brad Stevens, has said over and over that his percentages have not been indicative of his abilities.
Stevens always talks about the Law of Averages, and in regard to shooting, how percentages will always find their way toward where they should be. Young is finally showing signals that his percentages may be on the rise next season.
Most encouraging about Young’s play is that he hasn’t just hit shots. He has hit tough shots.
Many of Young’s 3-pointers have been contested, yet he has splashed home the majority of his attempts. He also made the biggest shot of the night during Tuesday’s win, a splash from the right corner that sealed Boston’s win with 18.9 seconds left on the clock.
Amidst Young’s team-best performance, that shot stood out most to head coach Micah Shrewsberry.
“The shot he made in the corner was huge, just being able to have just the mental focus just to knock one in and kind of put the game on ice,” Shrewsberry said. “That’s good for him. I think anytime you can have positive results like that in a pressure situation, everybody builds off that.”
Young can also build off of the steps that he has taken at the defensive end of the court. Shrewsberry said that in many of the instances in which it appears that Young is in the wrong place, it is because he is overcompensating for his teammates’ defensive lapses. Young is in correct position more often than not, and he has shown the ability to defend at a high level when the ball is in his man’s hands.
Take, for instance, his possession against Tyrone Wallace during the final minutes of Tuesday’s game. Wallace made a crossover move to his left before stopping on a dime and whipping the ball around his back and to the right. Young mirrored him all the way, and when Wallace rose up for a shot in the paint, Young reached in for a blocked shot (that he was not officially credited for).
Had Wallace made that shot, Boston’s lead would have been down to two with 1:24 left in the game. Instead, Young and the C’s got a critical stop and then followed it up with two points at the other end.
That sequence, save for maybe Young’s late trey from the right corner, was the most important portion of the game, and Young put his stamp all over it.
At this point, many will associate a negative connotation with a first-round draft pick playing in his third straight summer league. Those people should take into consideration that Young, as corny as it sounds, is still very much young.
He’s still a 20-year-old prospect with upside, and in his third summer league, he’s finally beginning to show signs of growth.