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Trae Young has spent the past several years in trade rumors. Those rumors intensified in the offseason, when it became clear that Atlanta did not plan to offer him a contract extension. Then Young got hurt, the Hawks soared without him and flailed upon his return, and his fate was sealed. It was revealed on Monday night that the Hawks are working with Young to find a suitable trade.

The field here is very narrow for reasons I've covered in depth in multiple stories, most recently here, but here's the gist of it: the NBA is moving away from small, ball-dominant guards who don't defend, and the aprons have made justifying max salaries for such players virtually impossible unless that player is consistently making All-NBA Teams. The Donovan Mitchells and Tyrese Maxeys of the world can justify a max salary. Players like Young, who are a tier below offensively and turnstiles defensively, simply can't. At this stage, the Hawks aren't trading Young for value. They're trying to cap dump him before he picks up his $49 million player option for next season.

Our mock trades here will reflect that. Of the three deals we'll propose, two are essentially just for expiring contracts. The third involves the Hawks essentially downgrading from a $50 million point guard to a $30 million point guard. Perhaps Young rebuilds his value in a new environment, but there just aren't that many teams for whom he currently makes sense. Here are three of the few that might consider a deal.

Trade 1: Trae Young to the Wizards

The Wizards are the one suitor known to be in the running here, and they make by far the most sense contractually. Between McCollum and Middleton, they have $64 million in expiring salary attached to players they have no intention of keeping. If the Hawks want to get off of Young's money and set themselves up for nearly max cap space this offseason, the Wizards are their path to doing so. However, the early reporting here indicates that it might cost them a bit of draft capital to do so.

There's fortunately a pretty easy compromise to be made. Washington owns Oklahoma City's 2026 first-round pick. It is almost certain to come in at No. 30. Atlanta owns Cleveland's 2026 first-round pick. Right now, that pick is set to come in at No. 16, but given how many injuries have plagued the Cavaliers this season, you'd figure it will climb back up to around No. 20 by the time the season ends. So why not just swap picks? Washington moves up. The Hawks save all of the money they want to save. 

Trae Young trade rumors: Why a Hawks-Wizards deal would make sense for both sides
Sam Quinn
Trae Young trade rumors: Why a Hawks-Wizards deal would make sense for both sides

If they want to use that money to pursue Anthony Davis, great. If they just want to replace one very expensive player in Young with two or three more modestly priced supporting pieces, that works too. I'd advocate for free-agent pursuits of Coby White (a cheaper alternative to Young who's slightly more defensively palatable given his size and a better 3-point shooter) and Sandro Mamukelashvili (as a replacement for the unreliable Kristaps Porziņģis as a shooting big man), but there are several viable paths available with that newfound financial flexibility.

As for Young's fit in Washington, the idea would be for the Wizards to treat it as a year-and-a-half audition before Young becomes a free agent in 2027. In the interim, they'd hope that having a genuine point guard could help speed up the development of their raw, young players. Alex Sarr and Bilal Coulibaly especially are dependent offensive players. They have great tools but need someone to create their looks early on. Young can do that. Whether or not he's a long-term fit remains to be seen, but at least in the short-term, he can help the Wizards more accurately assess their younger players.

Trade 2: Trae Young to the Clippers

The basic structure here for the Hawks is pretty similar to the Washington deal. It just comes without the draft pick sacrifice while allowing them to keep Luke Kennard. They would be trading Young for expiring contracts in a pure cap dump. That it involves a reunion with two of their former players in Collins and Bogdanović would just be a happy coincidence.

The concept of adding Young to the Clippers, at least in the short-term, doesn't make too much sense in the context of their current roster. Young is just another flavor of James Harden, a high-usage guard that doesn't offer much defensively, except Harden, even at this stage, is just a bit better at almost everything. He's at least a functional defender thanks to his size and quick hands. He's a more reliable shooter. He still gets to the line more than Young does. Those two aren't easy fits.

But the Clippers score 15.5 fewer points per 100 possessions when Harden goes to the bench. The Clippers added Bradley Beal and Chris Paul this offseason with the explicit intention of addressing these weak bench units offensively. One is out for the year due to injury and the other was unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the night. Young might actually fix this problem. Sure, getting him would leave the Clippers shorthanded in the front court, but the emergence of younger players like Yanic Konan Niederhauser and Kobe Sanders might be enough to offset these losses at least until Derrick Jones Jr. hopefully returns later in the season. The Clippers could aways pursue a follow-up trade.

But this trade wouldn't be about the 2025-26 season. It would be about what comes after. Harden and Kawhi Leonard are at the end of their primes. The Clippers still owe three more years worth of first-round picks, and the investigation into potential salary cap circumvention involving Leonard might strip them of more picks later on. They need some sort of bridge to the next era, a player who can at least keep them competitive enough to be attractive from a recruiting standpoint. That could be Young. He likely wouldn't be the centerpiece of the next Clippers contender, but he could help lure that player to Los Angeles. 

As an added bonus, a Young pursuit could strengthen the team's relationship with CAA, one of the most powerful agencies in the NBA. CAA happens to represent Chris Paul and Paul George, both of whom left the Clippers on less than ideal terms. Kris Dunn is the last player on the team that they represent, but bringing in Young, and ideally paying him a suitable extension, could help open recruiting doors down the line.

Trade 3: Trae Young to the Raptors

In our first two trades, the Hawks were essentially trading for cap space. Part of what they'd spend that cap space on would, presumably, be a cheaper ball-handler. This trade only makes sense if the Hawks view Quickley as a suitable, cheaper replacement. He's likely overpaid at $32.5 million per year, but that salary is flat for the next three seasons after this one as the cap will rise. The other benefit Quickley brings is defensive competence. He's used to playing off of the ball on offense, at least more so than most point guards, so he'd be a relatively easy fit in Atlanta, and his current Toronto team is built somewhat similarly around athletic wings. If the Hawks view Quickley's contract as untenable, this falls apart here. If not? Maybe we have something.

To make the money work on Toronto's end, both Quickey and Barrett would have to go out. The Hawks have no reason to take on Barrett's money for next season, but there's a solution here. The Bucks are currently sniffing around the league for win-now upgrades in the hopes of enticing Giannis Antetokounmpo into staying long-term. Barrett represents a meaningful upgrade over Kuzma, and that swap would make the deal feasible on Toronto's end financially. But Barrett is a sizable upgrade over Kuzma, so the Bucks would have to give up more value than just some short-term savings.

Here's our solve: while the Bucks don't control the best-case outcomes for their own first-round pick, they are guaranteed the lesser of their own pick and New Orleans' pick. That's still a pretty valuable first-round pick. Right now, it would be No. 11 overall, and if the Bucks got Barrett, they'd hope it would fall further. The Raptors are currently slated to pick No. 21. So we'll have them swap picks, with a top-four protection in case of a crazy lottery, to grease the wheels here.

And that raises the $49 million question: would the Raptors want Young as their point guard? They're roughly a league-average half-court offense, and while their starting lineup has improved with time, most of their best lineups have been bench-units. While Young would create defensive issues and take the ball out of the hands of Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram, he could also stabilize their half-court offense and make everyone's life a bit easier on that end of the floor. Ultimately, the Raptors are operating with a talent deficiency. That's why they've been linked to so many stars. Young, for all of his flaws, would be a talent upgrade on Quickley, and if the Raptors want out of the longer Quickley contract, they could view this as a cap dump as much as an upgrade.

There are so many "ifs" in this deal. We don't know if the Raptors would want Young, the Hawks would want Quickley or if the Bucks would pay for the Kuzma-to-Barrett upgrade. In these scenarios, there's almost always at least one Jenga piece that winds up collapsing the whole tower. But under a very narrow set of circumstances, this deal would make sense.

'Why not (Insert Team X)?'

"Hey Sam, these trades are interesting, but I think the so and so should try to trade for Trae Young." Well, let's go through some of those so and so's and figure out why they aren't trying to trade for Young...

  • The Nets fall broadly into the same camp as the Wizards as a team capable of helping desperate GMs save money, and like the Wizards, their roster is enough of a blank slate that they might like the idea of adding a talent like Young for relatively cheap. The difference between the Nets and Wizards is that Brooklyn's prospects are on-ball players. Egor Dëmin is starting to emerge as a very promising, big point guard. His value declines considerably if he has to watch Young dribble as a small forward. The same can be said about several young Nets. He enhances Washington's prospects, but gets in the way of Brooklyn's.
  • The Jazz might've been in the Wizards/Nets tier two months ago. Keyonte George might just be better than Trae Young at this point. He's certainly younger and cheaper. Hard pass.
  • Reed Sheppard has played so well for Houston that, while the Rockets could feasibly pursue a cheaper guard, the idea of adding one on a max contract is just a non-starter. Their salary structure couldn't support another deal of that size even if it sent out Fred VanVleet. Besides, why would they want to take the ball away from Alperen Sengun and Kevin Durant?
  • The Hawks have spoken to the Mavericks about an Anthony Davis trade, but Dallas reportedly wouldn't want to take Young back in that deal. The Mavericks are already paying close to max money for Kyrie Irving, so it would be hard to justify another, similar contract in Young.
  • The Kings were everyone's favorite fake Young team not because of basketball fit, but because, frankly, history has taught us that the Kings are usually eager to take on players nobody else wants. Nope. According to The Athletic, the Kings aren't interested in pursuing Young. They seem to have moved past last offseason's desperate pursuit of a point guard and accepted that this team needs to be rebuilt.
  • As we've covered, the Bucks want to make a win-now trade to try to entice Antetokounmpo into staying. Yes, Young is probably the single-most talented player Milwaukee could plausibly attain, but talent is really the only draw here. The Bucks explicitly do not need more shot-creation. They entered play Monday tied for second in the NBA in effective field goal percentage. They're losing because they're bad at everything else. They never get offensive rebounds. They turn the ball over too much. They never get to the line. They can't stop anyone. Aside from maybe drawing fouls, Young doesn't really address any of the things they're bad at. Besides, after Sunday's win, Antetokounmpo said directly that "when I'm a point guard, we win." He tried this with a better point guard in Damian Lillard, and it failed. He doesn't want to play off of Young. He wants players who can play off of him. Throw in the reality that the Bucks would basically have to give up all of their matching salary to do this and it just doesn't make sense.
  • The Timberwolves have been linked to several of the big-name point guards on the market, but making the money work here would be extremely difficult. The Timberwolves are above the first apron, so they'd have to send out more than the $45.9 million in salary for Young that they would be taking in for a trade to be legal. That effectively means that either Julius Randle or Rudy Gobert would have to be in the deal. Minnesota may not want to give either up, the younger Hawks likely wouldn't be especially interested in either if their endgame is saving money. The Wolves could potentially make a four-for-one swap of Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo, Mike Conley and Rob Dillingham for Young, but that's simply too much value to give up for such a flawed player, and making the roster math work in such a deal would be a challenge in itself. Ja Morant and LaMelo Ball both make below $40 million, so while they'd be tricky trade targets as well, that extra wiggle room makes both more plausible point guard targets for Minnesota. More likely, the Timberwolves eye point guards with lower 2025-26 cap hits like Coby White.
  • The Trail Blazers have a long-term point guard question, but they'd have to give up either Jrue Holiday or Jerami Grant to make the money work. The Hawks probably don't want either, and the Blazers, being as committed to size and defense as they seemingly are, likely wouldn't be eager to pursue Young anyway. They have Damian Lillard coming back next year anyway. Their point guard plan for the time being is likely to take another look at Scoot Henderson when he returns and then use Lillard as a bridge next year if Henderson doesn't claim the long-term job. If they do go big-game hunting, it would likely be for someone who can function off of the ball better than Young does, as Deni Avdija looks to be heading for his first All-Star Game thanks to his breakout offensive season.
  • The Heat aren't trading anything of value until the Giannis Antetokounmpo situation resolves itself. Period. They're in the mix for an MVP candidate. They're not messing with that over Young, who doesn't fit their culture of defense and hustle anyway.

That's nine teams we can state with relative comfort won't get in the mix for Young before even getting into the teams that were so obvious we didn't bother addressing them. This is not a friendly era in NBA history for players like him. For now, it genuinely might be Wizards or bust, with the Clippers and Raptors looming as potentially viable sleepers.