Report: Trae Young diagnosed with Grade 2 lateral sprain in ankle [UPDATE]

Update: April 22 — Young has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 lateral ankle sprain, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Trae went for an MRI on his ankle after leaving Wednesday night’s game vs. the Knicks. Young is expected to return to the lineup once swelling and discomfort subsides, which is good news.

This is good news for the Hawks, who are still fighting to get into the playoffs. At 32-27, the Hawks are in the 5th seed in the East but have the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat right behind them. The sooner Young can return, the better odds the Hawks have of avoiding the play-in tournament.

Atlanta Hawks PG Trae Young appears to be the latest star to suffer an ankle injury. He rolled his left ankle badly on a New York Knicks player Wednesday night and was helped to the locker room. Last week, we saw Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz sustain a bad sprained ankle. Before Spida, it was LeBron James who went due with a high ankle sprain. Now, Young appears to be headed toward the injury report after his ankle ailment. Here’s a video via Twitter of Young injuring the ankle:

Update: Young won’t return to Wednesday’s game vs. the Knicks due to a left ankle sprain.

The video mentions that high ankle sprain. That is not the case as of yet, we don’t have any update from the Hawks right now. Chances are the Hawks will rule out Young for the remainder of the game and we’ll get an update soon on his status. We saw Wizards rookie Deni Avdija injure his ankle and he immediately got an X-Ray. We should at least get results on an X-Ray tonight with an MRI to take place likely on Thursday.

Here’s Young being helped to the locker room via Bleacher Report. We hope Trae is alright!

The best case scenario is it looked worse than it is and it’s a bad bruise or minor sprain. A moderate ankle sprain could mean Young misses a few games or even a week or two. Worse than that is the high ankle sprain, which has held LeBron out for over a month now. The worst, worst case is torn ligaments in the ankle, which would likely mean the end of Young’s season. Again, we don’t know which fate it will be. Hopefully, it’s something minor and Young will be fine for the playoffs.

From a fantasy standpoint, the Hawks player to have if Young misses time is Bogdan Bogdanovic. He’s played great so far in April, entering Wednesday averaging 21.7 points on 50 percent shooting from beyond the arc in 11 games. Kevin Huerter, Lou Williams and Brandon Goodwin are the three other players who should see more minutes/usage in the back court if Trae is sidelined at all.