One of the prevailing trends of the 2025-26 season has been how limited trade interest has been for small, defensively deficient point guards making max salaries. The Ja Morant rumors came and went with only a few teams known to have had interest. Ditto LaMelo Ball. It says quite a bit about this market that the only team consistently linked to these players is Sacramento. That has little to do with Sacramento’s material circumstances. The whole basketball world just thinks the Kings are far enough behind league-wide roster-building trends to trade for players other teams don’t want.

Trae Young falls right in the thick of that Ball-Morant tier of misfit point guards. He has at times been the worst defensive player in the NBA, though he’s ticked his effort up just enough lately to duck that label. All of those pre-draft hopes that he’d become a Stephen Curry-esque shooter have long-since dissipated. He really only takes difficult, pull-up 3s, making them at a pretty modest rate and doing none of the off-ball work it takes to generate clean, catch-and-shoot looks. He’s a fairly one-dimensional player at this point, a heliocentric, pick-and-roll point guard in a league that’s moving away from that model.

On Monday, ESPN reported that the Hawks are working with Young’s representatives on a possible trade. That should surprise no one. Young is making max money to play for a team that no longer wants him. Atlanta is 2-8 with him on the floor this season, and 15-12 without him. They’ve moved on, following the league’s newfound preference for size, defense, athleticism and offensive balance. That puts Young in a fairly precarious position. With only a year-and-a-half left on his contract, he needs to find a team that actually does value his specific skill set at a point in league history in which very few teams actually do.

Marc Stein reported one possibility on Monday: the Washington Wizards. For a variety of reasons, they might be the only team in basketball that genuinely fits Young right now. So let’s dig into why that’s the case, and how a trade would ultimately benefit the Hawks.

Why Young makes sense for the Wizards

One of the biggest reasons so many teams fear players like Young is that they lower your ceiling. Anyone with distinct weaknesses gets attacked relentlessly in the playoffs. Young’s size makes him a massive target. His off-ball indifference limits the sort of players you can put next to him. Most young teams don’t want someone monopolizing the ball because they want their young players to use possessions for development. Most contending teams don’t want to trade for someone who monopolizes the ball because the mere fact that they’re contending usually means they already have veterans who are great with the ball. You either have someone who’s already better than Trae Young or you’re developing someone you hope will one day become better than Trae Young.

These issues are magnified by the 2023 CBA. In the past, teams would just stack talent hoping to figure it out later. Worst-case scenario, they’d just trade one of their stars if they didn’t fit. But giant contracts have never been more damaging than they are to day, and that has frozen large swaths of the trade market. The last thing any team wants is getting stuck with a huge contract they can’t move owed to a player they don’t really need.

The theoretical benefit to adding a player like Young is that, while he presents significant drawbacks in high-leverage settings, he is so good and so consistent with the ball in his hands in the regular season that adding him, provided he plays at his usual level, is a good way of raising your organizational floor. Just look at the offensive ratings Atlanta has posted with Young on the floor every year. They almost always compare well to the best offenses in the NBA.

Despite never playing with another All-Star talent before Jalen Johnson’s emergence this season, Young has almost always led the Hawks to above-average or better offense when he’s been on the floor. That may not lead to championships, but it leads to regular-season winning, or at least, it prevents outright tanking. Young makes you so good on offense that you’ll at least hover around the Play-In mix, where the Hawks have lived over the past few years. Atlanta is ready to graduate to bigger and better, but there are other teams that might like to take that leap.

One such team is, apparently, the Wizards. Washington currently ranks 27th in offense. The Wizards were 30th last season and 25th the year before that. Now, this was by and large the intention. The Wizards have been tanking for draft picks, so the losing has been by design. But they’ve run into a bit of an issue as they’ve kept losing. They haven’t created an ideal environment for those draft picks they’ve been banking on to develop.

The Wizards have made three lottery picks since this rebuild began. Two of them, Alex Sarr and Bilal Coulibaly, have been extremely raw, athletic forwards. The third, Tre Johnson, is another small guard, but one with no real instinct for playmaking. He’s a shooter first, second and third. Aside from being so raw that they barely know what they’re doing yet as players, they are point guard-reliant archetypes. They need someone to create shots for them, to run an organized offense that they can grow within.

Young fits the bill. If the Wizards can bring him in without surrendering any assets (and the latest reporting is that they’d actually want to receive draft capital for taking him in), they could try to take the leap from outright tanking to moderate competitiveness next season. In doing so, they’d be able to evaluate how their prospects look with an actual point guard holding their hands. And they’d be able to do this without making a long-term commitment to Young.

For reasons we’ll discuss shortly, Atlanta has real motivation to move Young before the offseason. But Washington’s books are so clean that there would really be no harm for the Wizards in adding a max salary for the 2026-27 season. Right now, the most expensive Wizard on next year’s balance sheet is Corey Kispert. He’ll make a bit less than $14 million, so less than the mid-level exception. Depending on where they draft, they’ll be in the neighborhood of $80 million in cap space next offseason. Even if they take on Young and he picks up his $49 million player option, they’ll have plenty of money leftover for further additions.

After that option? Young’s contract expires, and that’s the real appeal for Washington. The plan would be for the Wizards to audition Young for the next year-and-a-half, see how he fits alongside their young players and decide how to proceed from there. Knowing how much value point guards of his ilk have lost lately, they’d likely be able to eventually re-sign him at a lower price than his existing contract. And if they happen to draft a ball-dominant guard they prefer between now and his eventual free agency, they can let him walk with little harm done beyond the lost opportunity cost of the cap space they devoted to him. Even that would be minimal. Spending $80 million in cap space in a single offseason is nearly impossible to do responsibly unless you’re adding stars. Just ask the Nets, who still have $15 million in space leftover from last summer.

So there are quite a few stars aligning here for Young and the Wizards. Both the money and the basketball fit make sense. The only question is what sort of deal would work for Atlanta. Fortunately, the Hawks will be very motivated to make a deal.

Why the Wizards make sense as a trade partner for the Hawks

We’ve already covered Atlanta’s superior record with Young out, and we’ve addressed the league-wide disinterest in small, heliocentric point guards. But there’s a far bigger motivator for Atlanta here, and it’s financial.

The exact numbers are still to be determined based on Atlanta’s draft position through that ultra-valuable New Orleans first-round pick, but with Young on their books next season, the Hawks are hovering right around the projected salary cap. Remove Young from the equation, however, and Atlanta has pathways to over $40 million in cap space. That figure could shrink if they win the lottery, but regardless, it would unlock a number of very interesting roster-building paths for the Hawks as they pivot towards their new, younger core.

The obvious manner in which they could use that flexibility would be trading for Anthony Davis. They’ve been heavily linked to the Dallas big man, and could match most of his money with the expiring contracts of Kristaps Porziņģis and Luke Kennard. If the Hawks traded for Davis without moving Young, they’d be looking at more than $210 million owed to just eight players for next season: Davis, Young, Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, Onyeka Okongwu, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Zaccharie Risacher and the New Orleans pick. That would probably be untenable. Atlanta’s current ownership group has never paid the luxury tax, and those eight players alone would take them beyond next year’s projection. Even if Risacher is in the deal, they’d have to spend so much to fill out the roster with depth that they’d be in apron territory.

But get off of Young ahead of time without taking in any long-term salary and the equation changes. Suddenly, the Hawks could add Davis, keep their young core, and even shop around for free-agent help with the non-taxpayer mid-level exception without worrying too much about the tax. The Wizards are one of the few teams that could facilitate such a cap dump. Between Khris Middleton and C.J. McCollum, they have $64 million in expiring contracts attached to players who aren’t long for Washington whether they’re in this trade or not. This could be a fairly straightforward cap dump: Young and Kennard for McCollum and Middleton. If the Wizards really do want draft capital to help the Hawks in this way, there’s a pretty easily solution here. Washington has Oklahoma City’s first-round pick, which will almost certainly fall at No. 30. Atlanta has Cleveland’s first-round pick, which ultimately should land around No. 20. Just swap them. Problem solved. That it also saves the Hawks a bit of extra money next season is the cherry on top.

This plan doesn’t have to be specific to Davis. Imagine that the Hawks simply dumped Young and held onto the rest of their cap space. They’d have those six core players of Johnson, Okongwu, Alexander-Walker, Risacher, Daniels and the incoming Pelicans pick, all under the age of 27 and locked up for at least two more years apiece at team-friendly prices. They’d have cheap depth already with players like Asa Newell, Vit Krejci and Mo Gueye making the minimum or thereabouts next season. And they’d have $40 million or so in space plus the cap room mid-level exception to go shopping with in free agency.

They’d have two pretty straightforward needs at that point. The first would be some measure of shot-creation to replace Young, ideally at around half of the price. The other would be a big man who can shoot a bit to offset their forwards, who are by-and-large shaky in that respect. 

The former is easy enough to find. Coby White will probably be gettable in the $25 million a year range. Is he as good as Young? No, but he’s a better off-ball player, he’s bigger, and he’s going to cost roughly half as much. If they want someone a bit cheaper, they could probably sniff around other small guards getting affected by these changing league tides. Collin Sexton and Anfernee Simons seem very attainable. Maybe they get a bit more ambitious and go after Austin Reaves. There are guards available at pretty much any price point this offseason. Replacing Young with someone that generates more value per dollar spent should be doable.

Finding a shooting center would likely be tougher. The whole league is looking for those players, after all. Perhaps they could try to bring back Porziņģis in free agency, or chase Nikola Vučević. Maybe the Giannis Antetokounmpo situation plays out in such a way that Myles Turner becomes available through trade. Having financial flexibility and draft picks to work with gives Atlanta some options here. There’s not an obvious target, but there will be an option somewhere.

The new apron-centric world we now live in is forcing teams to be more prudent about where they spend their money. It’s going to open doors for teams that are well-built and affordable to challenge teams that have to make difficult choices for financial reasons. As it stands now, the 2026-27 Hawks won’t have a single player making more than $30 million next season. They may not be able to match the field in star power, but they can try to outdo them with depth and versatility. That’s the real benefit of a Young trade. It relieves them of a player they no longer want while freeing up the resources for them to pursue everything else they need. The Wizards, given those expiring contracts and their circumstantial need for someone like Young, may be the only team in the NBA that’s willing to do that for Atlanta. Everyone else likely has some bad money it would need to include in a deal.

Atlanta Hawks four-time All-Star Trae Young and his agents, Aaron Mintz, Drew Morrison and Austin Brown, are working with the franchise on a trade, sources told ESPN on Monday.

Young’s reps and Hawks general manager Onsi Saleh have begun positive and collaborative talks over the past week on finding a resolution, sources said.

The Hawks and Young’s agents have maintained dialogue over his future over the past several months — since the franchise elected not to offer a contract extension to the 27-year-old guard. Young has this season and next season at $95 million total remaining on his deal, with a player option in the offseason.

Young has been the face of the Hawks’ franchise since he was drafted in 2018 and sits as the team’s all-time leader in 3-pointers and assists. He has led Atlanta to the postseason three times in his eight years, including a run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2021.

But the Hawks appear poised to turn the page on a new era with the emergence of forward Jalen Johnson, who entered Monday averaging 24 points, 10.2 rebounds and 8.5 assists, and free agent acquisition Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who is averaging a career-high 20.7 points.

Young has dealt with leg injuries this season that have limited him to only 10 games. In the 27 games he has sat out entering Monday, the Hawks are 15-12 compared with 2-8 with him while holding opponents to nearly 10 points less per game, according to ESPN Research.

Young, who dealt with a right MCL sprain early in the season and has managed residual pain from the injury, is currently sidelined because of a right quad contusion that has caused him to sit out the past six games.

An All-NBA selection in 2021-22, Young has career averages of 25.2 points and 9.8 assists. He led the league in assists last season with 11.6 per game.