The Atlanta Hawks Should Be Open To Trading Trae Young In 2023 NBA Offseason

The Atlanta Hawks have spent most of the 2022-23 NBA season in disarray.

In late December, Hawks president of basketball operations Travis Schlenk abruptly stepped down from his position and transitioned to an advisory role. Less than two months later, general manager Landry Fields parted ways with head coach Nate McMillan and quickly hired former Utah Jazz head coach Quin Snyder as his replacement.

Heading into Wednesday, the Hawks are eighth in the Eastern Conference with a 34-35 record. That’s hardly where they expected to be after sending three first-round picks to the San Antonio Spurs this past offseason for All-Star guard Dejounte Murray.

If Snyder can’t pull the Hawks out of their tailspin, they may need to consider a larger roster shakeup this offseason. That should include a willingness to listen to trade offers for star point guard Trae Young.

That would have been unfathomable two years ago, when Young helped guide the Hawks on a surprise run to the Eastern Conference Finals. Last year, Young earned his second All-Star nod while averaging 28.4 points on a career-high 46.0 percent shooting, 9.7 assists and 3.1 made three-pointers per game. However, he averaged only 15.4 points and 6.0 assists while shooting 31.9 percent overall and a dismal 18.4 percent from three-point range in a largely uncompetitive first-round series against the No. 1 seed Miami Heat.

The Hawks’ offense often cratered when Young left the floor in past years, which is partially why they acquired Murray this past offseason. From 2019-20 through 2021-22, Atlanta averaged 117.5 points per 100 possessions with Young on the court and only 105.9 per 100 whenever he was off. This year, they’re averaging 117.8 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor and 112.2 per 100 with him off, a marked upgrade from where they were over the past few seasons.

The addition of Murray should also have enabled Young to operate more off the ball, but that hasn’t come to fruition yet. Only 1.4 of his 6.6 three-point attempts per game of are the catch-and-shoot variety, even though he’s shooting 37.2 percent on those looks. The other 5.3 three-pointers per game are pull-ups, and he’s shooting only 32.7 percent on those. Last season, he shot 48.1 percent on his 1.0 catch-and-shoot three-point attempts per game, and he shot 37.0 percent on his 6.9 pull-up three-point attempts.

If Snyder can coax Young into becoming more active off the ball, particularly when he shares the floor with Murray, it should only raise the ceiling on the Hawks’ offense. That isn’t the biggest long-term concern about building around Young, though. The Hawks should be far more worried about his defense and his leadership (or lack thereof on both fronts).

Since selecting Young with the No. 5 overall pick in the 2018 draft, the Hawks have ranked 27th, 28th, 16th, 26th and 22nd (this season) leaguewide in points allowed per 100 possessions, respectively. Over that span, they have allowed 116.8 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor—which would rank 26th leaguewide this season—compared to 111.1 with him off.

Young has the fourth-worst defensive box plus/minus (minus-2.1) among players who have played at least 2,000 minutes over the past half-decade. He also has the second-fewest defensive win shares out of the 94 players who’ve played at least 8,000 minutes since the 2018-19 season.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Hawks hired Snyder in part to “improve the franchise’s player development and accountability, and get the team moving toward the top 10 in both offensive and defensive rankings.” Given Young’s diminutive stature (6’1″, 164 lbs), it’s fair to wonder whether the Hawks can ever put together a top-10 defense with such a glaring point-of-attack liability in their backcourt.

If defense were the only concern about Young, the Hawks could try to scheme ways to hide him on that end of the floor. However, there appear to be questions about his leadership, too.

“It’s no secret there’s a serious disconnect between Young, the team’s star player, and many—though some say nearly all—of his teammates,” CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter wrote in early March. “He is not beloved, sources say, and there’s a strong view that Young fails to lead, to understand or care to understand what is required of him, and that as a result the team will never achieve what it should until that reality is fixed.”

That tension has bubbled to the surface on occasion in recent years.

In January 2021, Hawks forward John Collins “shared his unfiltered and unhappy views about the way” Young was “running the offense,” according to Sam Amick and Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. He “talked about the need to get into offensive sets more quickly and to limit all those early shot-clock attempts that leave his teammates on the outside looking in.” However, Young “made it clear to others later that he strongly disagreed with Collins’ assessment.”

Earlier this season, Young and McMillan “had an exchange” that “led to Young choosing not to attend” the team’s home game against the Denver Nuggets, according to Amick and Shams Charania of The Athletic. Both Young and McMillan tried to downplay it afterward, but Charania later reported that McMillan had “strongly considered resigning from his position” amidst the Hawks’ turbulent season. Although McMillan refuted that at the time of Charania’s initial report, Lauren Williams and Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution echoed it in mid-January.

The Hawks also need to consider their long-term outlook when weighing whether to be open to trading Young.

Even if Bogdan Bogdanovic declines his $18 million player option for the 2023-24 season, the Hawks are set to be well over the projected $134 million salary cap next year. De’Andre Hunter will be entering the first year of the four-year, $90 million extension he signed last October, while Young ($40.1 million), John Collins ($25.3 million) and Clint Capela ($21.1 million) will all be earning north of $20 million each as well.

Those four players alone will be earning roughly $106.7 million next season. Add Murray ($17.7 million) and Onyeka Okongwu ($8.1 million) to that, and the Hawks will already be bumping up against the $134 million salary cap without factoring in the rest of their roster.

Both Okongwu and Saddiq Bey ($4.6 million), the latter of whom the Hawks acquired ahead of the trade deadline for five second-round picks, will be eligible for extensions this summer. Meanwhile, Murray will be heading into the final year of his contract in 2023-24 and is set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer unless he signs an extension before then.

Even if the NBA does change its extension rules by enacting a new collective bargaining agreement ahead of next season, Murray’s low salary will work against the Hawks in extension talks.

Under the current rules, the Hawks can offer him a starting salary of 120 percent of his previous salary with 8 percent annual raises from there, which means they’re limited to offering a four-year, $95.2 million extension. Even if they can offer 140 or 150 percent of his previous salary in the new CBA, they could offer no more than a four-year, $111.1 million extension or a four-year, $119.0 million deal, respectively. As a free agent, Murray can sign a deal with a starting salary worth 30 percent of the salary cap, which could potentially put him in line for more than $150 million.

Since the Hawks won’t have the cap space to replace Murray if he walks in free agency, they’re in what The Athletic’s John Hollinger refers to as the Bird Rights trap with him. They’re compelled to re-sign him because losing him for nothing would be a devastating setback, particularly considering how much they gave up to acquire him. However, they’ll have to question whether it’s wise to devote roughly 50 percent of their salary-cap space each season to their starting backcourt between Young and Murray.

The Hawks could create some financial wiggle room by trading Collins, who has been a fixture in trade rumors in recent years, or dealing Capela if they sign Okongwu to an extension. They could also trade Murray this summer to recoup some of what they gave up to acquire him last year, but his impending free agency would work against them. They’d likely take a net loss on the two transactions, although it could give them some extra wiggle room for trades down the road.

The Hawks traded their fully unprotected 2025 and 2027 first-round picks to the Spurs for Murray, along with a 2026 first-round pick swap. They have their own first-rounders this year and next, along with a lottery-protected 2024 first-round pick from the Sacramento Kings, but they can’t trade any first-round picks beyond those until 2029 at the earliest.

That’s where trading Young could work to their advantage. He still has three guaranteed years remaining on his contract, along with a $49.0 million player option in 2026-27 which he figures to decline. The Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell trades last offseason set a baseline for what the Hawks should expect in return for Young—multiple first-round picks and/or pick swaps, along with at least one young, high-upside prospect.

If the Hawks added that package to a core of Murray, Hunter, Collins, Capela, Okongwu, Griffin and Bey, they could have the foundation of a solid playoff team in place, plus far more financial flexibility moving forward. They would also replenish their war chest of draft picks, which they could either use themselves or in another trade down the line.

Trading Young might be a bitter pill to swallow, particularly since he was the centerpiece of the Hawks’ draft-night trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Dallas Mavericks. Giving up on Young while Doncic puts together an MVP-caliber campaign in Dallas would be rough optics-wise, but it might be the best thing for the Hawks’ long-term future.

Otherwise, they’re headed for multiple key decisions in the next 18 months—whether to extend Okongwu and Bey, whether to re-sign Murray, whether to finally trade Collins, etc.—that is likely to end in a significant talent drain no matter which path they choose.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.