Trae Young has faced plenty of naysayers throughout his basketball career, proving one person wrong after another in the trajectory of his evolution as a player. The Atlanta Hawks point guard recalls how others often scoffed at his potential, only for him to rise to the occasion and prove his mettle as a player.

The 6-foot-2 floor general can still remember every bit of doubt he's had to shake through his venture into the NBA, admitting he holds on to all those comments to fuel his inner fire:

“I remember coming into high school, coming into college, they were saying, ‘He’s too small.’ Coming into the league, ‘He’s too small. He has bust potential.’ The whole trade with Luka Doncic. I don’t know that there’s just one [slight],” Young told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports. “And whenever they stop talking just about me, they start talking about the organization and talking about how they made the worst decision and how it could be the worst trade in NBA history.

“That all motivates me, for sure. There are little things that stick with me. You know my family and how we roll. I’m out to prove people wrong. I’ve got screenshots on my phone of negative tweets. It’s little things like that I still have on my mind and it motivates me every time. They’ll see.”

Young had a spectacular rookie season, battling through a rough first half of his 2018-19 campaign to really impress and make pundits eat their words, as he become one of the best point guards in the league during the second half of the season — making it a much closer race against favorite Luka Doncic.

The Oklahoma product now has another full training camp under his belt and is dying to show he has All-Star potential, something he can prove by catapulting the Hawks into playoff contention.