Why would the Wizards trade for Trae Young?
- - Why would the Wizards trade for Trae Young?
Ben RohrbachJanuary 7, 2026 at 10:19 PM
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Trae Young is an incredible basketball player.
Imagine being as good at anything as Trae Young is at this sport. Let's get that out of the way up top. I don't want to say anything negative about him in that sense. He is a wonderfully entertaining talent — among the 30 or 40 best to do it in the entire world. And sometimes he can be even better than that.
But can you win an NBA championship with Young as your point guard?
That is the question every team must now ask themselves, if they had not already, since Young is reportedly working with the Atlanta Hawks to find a new landing spot.
If the answer to that question is a flat no, and it is for many, there should be no reason to trade for the four-time All-Star. The point of the game is to win the Larry O'Brien trophy, and if you think you cannot win it with him, then why even entertain it? This is a conclusion most of the league may have already reached.
Then, there is the matter of his fit. Young has been, almost exclusively, a ball-dominant point guard, though in the past two seasons his usage rate has dipped below 30%, where it stood for five straight seasons, when he ranked among the league's leaders. He wants to use a lot of possessions, either to launch an attempt from 30 feet, to get to his floater, or to fire a pass to the perimeter for an assist.
It works quite well. Young gets his numbers, averaging 26.5 points and 10.2 assists over a six-year span, and the Hawks are capable of fielding an offense that peaked as the league's second-rated outfit in 2021-22, when they won 43 games. That is about where they end up every year, give or take a few wins, and they peaked as an Eastern Conference finalist in 2021, losing to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks.
That was as good as it got. It was supposed to get better this season, when they gave Young every weapon possible — a two-way wing core of Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Zaccharie Risacher, plus centers Onyeka Okongwu and Kristaps Porziņģis — in the wide-open East.
It has not worked. The Hawks are giving up on Young, largely because they have always been worse defensively with him, and now their offense is good enough — with NAW playing so well — to carry that defense into a similar 43-win territory without him. And Young has failed to elevate them any further.
TRAE YOUNG'S ON/OFF NUMBERS
2018-19
108.5
101.9
114.8
105.8
2019-20
111.2
95.7
116.1
107.9
2020-21
118.2
104.4
113.0
107.8
2021-22
117.2
107.2
114.9
107.8
2022-23
115.9
111.4
114.6
112.6
2023-24
116.6
113.2
119.1
115.3
2024-25
115.2
105.2
114.6
108.9
2025-26
119.4
112.5
126.2
112.9
Johnson is their future. His ceiling knows no bounds. He has been tremendous all season offensively, averaging a 24-10-8, and he is capable of top-tier defense, too. He is the type of player who, when paired with another two-way star, could take the Hawks to the top of the East, something they have never done in the franchise's history. Atlanta could very well conjure titles with him at Giannis Antetokounmpo's side.
But that is a different trade scenario. Here we are discussing Young, whose defense is as deficient as his offense is brilliant, if not more so. This is the thing with him. He gets relentlessly attacked on that end in the playoffs, and it is a problem for his team. He would need a team full of two-way talents — a team like the Minnesota Timberwolves — to answer that question about whether he can play point for a title team.
Which brings us to the Washington Wizards, who would not have championship aspirations if they were to land Young, and who reportedly have interest in doing just that. To think they could win a title with Young is to think, in the next few years, as Young ages into his 30s, that some combination of Alex Sarr, Tre Johnson, Kyshawn George, Bilal Coulibaly and Bub Carrington transform into a squad as good as the existing Hawks, and that that core enjoys playing with Young more than the current edition of Atlanta.
These are just the facts. Young has the worst defensive rating of anyone in the league who plays as much as he does. You can simultaneously be among the league's very best on offense and its least-effective on defense. The Hawks have lived this experience for the better part of eight seasons, and they are over it.
So, why would the Wizards want Young? Why might a team that may well be among those who answer no to the question of whether they can win a championship with him still want to pursue him? To get better, of course. Young can do that. He could organize them into a playoff team, as he did in Atlanta, where his Hawks mostly topped out as first-round fodder, save for one fortune-filled trip to the conference finals.
That looks pretty good from where the Wizards are sitting, once again at the bottom of the standings.
Is it wise? That is up for debate. Getting better is also a strategy. Except, in Young, you invite in both improvement to a certain point and a ceiling at that point — a ceiling that is sub-championship level, most likely, if not for the absolute perfect roster around him (and the Wiz are far from fielding that).
Every team must ask: Can we give up what we need to give up to get Young, fit his salary onto our cap sheet and still have enough around him to mask his deficiencies as a player? Washington can talk itself into that scenario. The Wizards have the expiring contracts of CJ McCollum and Khris Middleton to deal, young talent and picks. They could get Young on the cheap, hope he accelerates the development of their core, and pray they make the playoffs before it comes time to pay Johnson, Sarr and the others.
That is a needle to thread. They better not deal anyone good, as they did when they traded Deni Avdija to the Portland Trail Blazers for the right to draft Carrington. And they better not let the team become The Trae Young Show, where their prospects' development stagnates as he drives them into the middle.
If the Hawks were to attach draft capital to Young's contract in exchange for McCollum's expiring deal, plus whatever matching salary necessary to make the math work, so long as it does not cost the Wizards one of their premier prospects, maybe it still makes sense to add Young for the short term. Young owns a $49 million player option for the 2026-27 season. In the meantime, it is hard to imagine him assembling this young core into anything north of a play-in tournament team, though he might still sell some tickets.
So, should the Wiz do it? You would have to be the Trae Young of general managers to make that call.
Source: “AOL Sports”
