The Hawks say Trae Young will have surgery on a torn ligament and be re-evaluated in 4 weeks.
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ATLANTA (AP) — The Atlanta Hawks have lost All-Star point guard Trae Young for at least four weeks with a left hand injury.
The Hawks announced Sunday that Young suffered a torn ligament in the fifth finger of his left hand during Friday night’s loss to Toronto. Young will have surgery Tuesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.
The team said Young will be evaluated in four weeks.
“You feel awful for Trae more than anything,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “It is going to be a challenge for him not to be out there.”
The Hawks entered Sunday 2-3 in games Young has missed this season.
What it means: The loss of Young comes as the Hawks, fighting for the final play-in tournament spot in the Eastern Conference, are facing front-line depth issues as center Onyeka Okongwu recovers from a sprained left toe. Coach Quin Snyder said Thursday that Okongwu “is not going to be available for the foreseeable future.”
“You have to adapt,” Snyder said. “That happened when we lost Jalen (Johnson). We have to have minutes from Kobe (Bufkin) and Patty (Mills) and we obviously know what (Dejounte Murray) can do. I don’t want to wallow in anything.”
Trae’s impact: Young, who made his third All-Star team this year, leads Atlanta with his averages of 26.4 points and 10.8 assists per game. With the loss of Young, Dejounte Murray likely will assume primary ball-handling duties, and Bogdan Bogdanovic took Young’s spot in the starting lineup for Sunday night’s game against Orlando. In 46 games as a reserve, Bogdanovic is averaging 16.8 points.
“This will be fluid. If Boji starts, we lose his punch off the bench,” Snyder said. “Do you want him stabilizing the second unit? There’s a lot of things that go into it. We will approach it that way.”