Well, that didn’t take long to materialize. Less than a week after reports came out that Trae Young was working with the Atlanta Hawks to find a new destination, he is being shipped to the Washington Wizards for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert.
No time to waste – let’s get into grading this one.
Atlanta Hawks
At first, the sticker shock feels like a lot. Trae Young is in his eighth year as the face of the Hawks franchise, and now he gets dumped for a role player and an expiring veteran. It feels like a wildly low return for a four-time All-Star who nearly averages 25 and 10 for his career. But there’s a lot more going on.
It was becoming clear that the team and Trae were both ready to move on. Jalen Johnson’s step into the spotlight has given them a new direction, and new GM Onsi Saleh is backing his horse. It’s clear that Trae saw the writing on the wall when extension talks failed to materialize this past offseason. It’s a Jalen Johnson-centric team now, and there was no room for one of the most ball-dominant players in the league to coexist. Just look at this season’s results: Atlanta is 2-8 with Young in the lineup and 15-13 without him. It’s clear the roster was being built for a post-Trae Young world.
There are also significant financial motivations at play here. CJ McCollum can help them in the short term, but his contract is valuable to them. Between McCollum and Kristaps Porzingis, who is unable to stay on the floor long due to his POTS diagnosis, that’s $60 million in expiring money this offseason as the Hawks look to aggressively reshape their roster.
Corey Kispert is the real asset on the floor. A lethal movement shooter with good size, he fits into any rotation well, and is on an affordable deal for his skillset. They signed Luke Kennard to play this role in the offseason, but that hasn’t quite panned out, and he’ll hit free agency as well. This gives them a short and long-term upgrade on their floor spacing.
Adding two shooters that don’t need the ball only accentuates the Jalen Johnson-ness of it all. He can run and gun as he pleases, with a diverse group of shooters, defenders, and paint patrollers around him. It’s not going to make the Hawks significantly better in the short term, but it should help them identify what does and doesn’t work around their new franchise cornerstone while keeping them squarely in the playoff picture.
Trae Young is a great player, but he was on the way out, and he needs to be paid immediately. That turns a perennial All-Star into a negative asset. To get multiple useful players for Trae without attaching draft capital to move him is a major win. Once you get over the shock of the trade, you start to see the merits for the Hawks. It’s the official announcement of a new beginning in Atlanta.
Grade: A-
Washington Wizards
This feels like a significant shift from what we’ve seen Washington’s new front office do. They’ve prioritized size, athleticism, and defense – all things Trae Young does not help with. But it’s possible that the opportunity cost was too good for them.
Trae Young is many things. He’s at times a difficult personality to handle, a brutally bad defender, and a one-tricky pony as far as his offensive talents. If you have Trae, you’re going to run a ton of pick and roll, and it’s going to flow through him. But, for the Wizards, this could be a good thing.
They have a negative offensive structure at the moment. Rookie Tre Johnson is a lethal shooter but only 19 and still figuring things out. Bub Carrington has not panned out. AJ Johnson may have just been a flash in the pan. Alex Sarr and Kyshawn George have taken steps offensively, but they’re both defense-first players, as is Bilal Coulibaly. If one team needed a Trae Young to come in and provide some offensive floor, it was the Wizards.
Yes, he will take away touches from the young players. But few of them have made a case that they deserve NBA touches. Johnson needs a handler to play off, Sarr needs someone who can feed him on the roll, and guys like George and Coulibaly need someone to turn them into advantage extenders instead of advantage creators. There’s a chance that slotting Trae into this team suddenly makes them make sense.
There’s also a chance it goes disastrously for a season. Perhaps playing for a team destined for the lottery doesn’t inspire confidence in Trae, and they can’t get their best ball out of him. Or the heliocentric style he employs crushes the creativity of their young players and head coach Brian Keefe. Here’s the upside for Washington: if it’s not working, you can wash your hands of things with a wave of your hand.
Young has a player option for $49 million this offseason. If things are going poorly, it’s unlikely he’ll pick that up, unless he does so to facilitate a trade. If he’s stubborn and picks it up with the intention of sullying things, waive him! Who cares! You’re the Wizards, and the plan was always to stink. It’s a low-risk gamble on a star talent, and all they gave up to get him was a veteran who was salary-dumped on them and a player they had seemingly moved on from.
It’s all upside with no long-term risk – the kind of move these Wizards should be looking to make. My only gripe is that they could have pried some draft capital out of the Hawks for solving their Trae problem, but these Wizards will survive without the picks.
Grade: B
