Hawks guard Trae Young returns to practice, teases potential first game

On Thursday, the Hawks kick off a road-home series of back-to-back games against the Hornets at the Spectrum Center. The Hawks have not confirmed or officially updated Young’s status, but the 26-year-old could play his first game in seven weeks.

The Hawks released an injury report Wednesday afternoon for Thursday’s game that listed Young as questionable.

The team assigned Young to their G League affiliate Tuesday after announcing he would return to practice over the weekend. Now, Young has crossed another benchmark off his list to make his return to the court.

“Yeah, that was my first time playing five (five-on-five),” Young said after practice Wednesday. “So, it felt good just being able to get up and down. Doing a lot of one-on-one, two-on-two isn’t the same as playing five. So being able to play some fives with those guys, I appreciate them letting me come down and play with them, and (coach) Steve (Klei) for allowing me to work out with the guys. So it was very helpful, and I think it definitely helped me with my conditioning, too.”

He sustained a right knee MCL sprain Oct. 29 in the Hawks’ matchup against the Nets. He has missed the past 22 games after appearing in the first four, as well as half of the first quarter of the game in Brooklyn.

Despite feeling eager to return to the floor shortly after the injury, Young understood that he needed to exercise patience in his recovery.

“It was definitely hard to be patient, especially when you’re not used to this,” Young said. “Knock wood, I never wanted to be injured. Because you never want to go through the rehab process of getting your condition back the long way, and other people telling you when you need to come back, and all that stuff, when you feel like you could come back earlier. It’s sometimes frustrating, but it’s something that, to be honest, most, if not all, high-level athletes, at least go through this once or twice. So I can’t be mad at it too bad.”

Young also reminded himself that though he may feel pain or other ill-feelings, that his injury wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It allowed him to push himself through the rehab process.

“This isn’t the worst thing in the world,” Young said when asked about how he mentally handled rehab. “So I just got to get through it and push through any pain I’m feeling, or whatever, through the rehab process, and that’s what got me here. And I feel like it’s been long, but it hasn’t been too long.”

The injury and time away also gave Young some additional perspective.

The Hawks have won 13 of their past 22 games and have gotten a sense of how they want to play their game. They want to play fast. They want to play with the pass, and they know that they need their defense to power their offense.

That has given Young a chance to see how he slots into the grand scheme of things and where he can enhance what the Hawks do.

“I knew, as the season would go on I knew we were going to find certain things that we would all need to do and all could do to help our team be better,” Young said. “And, obviously, being out, I see certain things that our team is doing really good, that I want to keep allowing our team to do and making sure our team is doing those things.

“But then there’s times where we’re struggling, or there’s times where it looks kind of tough on some of the guys, and I just want to make it easier for them. So for me, since Day One, I’ve always felt like I was a puzzle piece to the big puzzle. Like I’ve never felt like I was the whole puzzle. So I’m about to come back and do the same thing, just be another piece to the puzzle and try to fit in and make all this thing work.”