Trae Young proved why he’s irreplaceable with Game 5 winning shot for

Let’s stop the nonsense: The Atlanta Hawks aren’t trading Trae Young. All you needed to do was watch Game 5 in Boston on Tuesday to figure out why.

The narrative that has been simmering for months in some corners of the NBA media — that Atlanta might look to move on from Young if this season ended badly — got so that management felt compelled to get on the phone with Young the day of the Hawks’ play-in game at Miami and assure him it wasn’t true.

But clickbait rumor and innuendo needs to finally give way to this reality: Young is undeniably one of the great offensive talents in the game, and what he did to extend the Hawks’ first-round series to a Game 6 in Atlanta is not something any franchise can snap its fingers and replace.

Young is not a perfect player, and the Hawks are still not likely to win this series against the Boston Celtics. But his 38-point performance, capped by a 29-foot swish with 1.8 seconds remaining, showed yet again that he can perform and win significant playoff games and that those who believe his flaws outweigh his genius will spend the next decade being wrong a lot.

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Young has been to the postseason three times in five seasons. So far, his résumé includes the following:

► 36 points in closeout win on the road over the Knicks in the first round in 2021.

► Scoring 35 and 39 in road wins against the 76ers in the next round.

► 48 points in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on the road against Milwaukee.

► 38 points on the road in last year’s play-in elimination game against Cleveland.

► And in the last three games of this series against Boston, Young has averaged 35 points while shooting 45.7% from the field. He was particularly clutch at the end of Game 3 and in the fourth quarter of Game 5 with 16 points.

Nobody else of Young’s peer group has been as…