Young can become a free agent in the summer of 2026
Even in the moment, Atlanta’s run to the 2021 Eastern Conference finals felt a bit flimsy. The New York Knicks were a somewhat abnormal No. 4 seed with no shot-creation beyond Julius Randle. The Hawks were then more of an accessory to the collapse of the Philadelphia 76ers than the cause of their demise. When they ran into a less combustible contender in Milwaukee, they were bounced in six games. Without the favorable circumstances of that 2021 run, they’ve been stuck in the middle of the already middling Eastern Conference.
The Heat handed them a gentleman’s sweep in 2022. They responded with a pricey Dejounte Murray trade that ended with the same outcome, a first-round loss to the Boston Celtics in 2023. They didn’t even make the first-round in 2024, losing a play-in Game to the Chicago Bulls in which Trae Young’s defensive woes were once again exposed. The 2025 play-in represented the entire frustrating Young experience rolled into one.
He was ejected from the first play-in game, a loss to Orlando. He was invisible for the first half of the second, but that was hardly his fault. Miami geared its entire game plan towards slowing him down, which is nothing new to Young. Nikola Jokić is the most famous member of the “no All-Star teammate” club, but Young is a card-carrying member himself. He’s been playing next to a combination of youngsters and role players for his entire career, and even then, he’s proven himself capable of overcoming that supporting cast in spurts. He was sensational in the second half as he carried the Hawks to overtime. They just couldn’t outlast the Heat there.
All told, the partnership hasn’t been especially fruitful for anyone. Young has won two playoff series in seven years in Atlanta. His teams have never gone more than four games over .500. And neither side has ever seemed especially happy about any of this.
Young’s future in Atlanta was murky at the trade deadline, according to Chris Haynes, because he “is a fierce competitor” and “he wants to win.” The Hawks presumably want to win as well, and they’ve reportedly considered Young trades independently in that effort.
“A simple fact of the matter is if there was a real market for Trae Young, he’d be somewhere else right now,” ESPN’s Tim MacMahon said on the Hoop Collective podcast in August.
Instead, the Hawks dealt Murray, hoping things would improve this year with Young as the lone point guard in the starting lineup. Obviously, they didn’t.
Both sides have seemingly circled each other on this front, but neither has moved on it. Now, they have to. Young can become a free agent in 2026. If the Hawks don’t want to keep him, they have to trade him for fear of losing him for nothing. If Young doesn’t want to stay, he’ll turn down whatever extension they offer. It’s entirely possible that both player and team will be ready for a split. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the grass is greener for anyone on the other side.
Potential with Hawks
Young is among the very best shot-creators in the NBA, and there’s reason to believe that the Hawks do have some room to grow with him and the younger core they’ve developed around him. Atlanta outscored opponents by more than six points per 100 possessions with Young and Jalen Johnson on the floor this season, according to Cleaning the Glass. Zaccharie Risacher and Dyson Daniels are still on rookie deals and figure to get even better. Everyone wants wings. The Hawks have them to spare. That doesn’t mean they should’ve traded De’Andre Hunter in what was effectively a cap dump at the deadline, but there are pieces to work with here, a young group that should improve.
The question is whether or not Young’s presence is conducive to it doing so. The Hawks have an army of versatile wings, an emerging young center in Onyeka Okongwu and, in Daniels, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. How did they rank 18th on defense? Young is probably a good place to start. With him on the bench, the Hawks allowed only 108.9 points per 100 possessions this year. Only the Thunder were better over the full season.
Offense is a bit harder to peg. Everyone’s life is easier with Young on the court. He’s led the league in assist rate in three of the past four seasons, and he’s not monopolizing the ball to quite the same extent that he has in the past. His 29.6% usage rate this season is the lowest of his career excluding his rookie year. There have been baby steps in a more team-friendly direction — more ball screens, less aimless dribbling, but still quite a bit of both. That’s probably all you’re getting with Young. He’s never taken catch-and-shoot 3s at the rate he needs to, and despite the early-career Stephen Curry comparisons, he has never shot anywhere near as efficiently as Curry, or, more importantly, moved off of the ball with nearly the same effort or intent. If he’s not soaking up huge usage numbers, he’s not worth having on your team.
But if he is, he creates an artificial ceiling for the rest of the younger players. There isn’t a primary creator in the bunch among Daniels, Risacher and Johnson … but all three have untapped on-ball potential. That’s especially true of Daniels, whom many thought could play point guard when he was drafted in 2022. Part of the argument for a Young trade is as simple as the opportunity it creates for everyone else. Split his usage among a replacement guard landed in the trade and three prominent wings in the picture here, and you at least find out what you really have with them. Are they a core worth building around? Can the three of them fit together on a team with real ambitions?
The ideal fit
Ironically, Young probably needs wings like that if he’s ever going to hit his own ceiling. He just needs them to tilt more towards 3-point shooting than ball-handling. He needs quite a bit to function on a great team. A star rim-protector is probably essential to establishing a defensive baseline. That player also probably needs to be a great lob finisher to maximize Young’s dominance in floater range and comfort making those passes. They need secondary scoring, but they need it come within the flow of an offense Young will control with his pick-and-roll game. He needs a very specific sort of roster.
Teams are generally willing to accommodate a certain caliber of offensive star on that front. That’s basically the template for James Harden or Luka Dončić. Young isn’t as good as either on offense. He’s smaller and more of a defensive problem as well. You have to build your team around Young for it to make sense, but does it make sense to build a team around Young if the goal is to win a championship?
That’s probably why teams commonly linked to guards probably won’t factor seriously into Young talks. Orlando doesn’t want to take the ball out of the hands of Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner — it wants to supplement them with shooting above all else. Houston is in the same boat. Devin Booker makes sense as the closer the Rockets need because they could still run their offense through Alperen Sengun and eventually Amen Thompson the rest of the night. Maybe that’s plausible with Young, but it wouldn’t optimize him. His need for the ball clashes with most great players.
The Spurs were the obvious fit just because they control Atlanta’s first round picks until 2027. They wanted a point guard. The Hawks probably would’ve loved the ability to tank. San Antonio chose De’Aaron Fox. Fox isn’t a great shooter either, but his experience with Domantas Sabonis showed how he could function next to a big man wants to use the ball for things other than dunking.
Possible destinations
What sort of market would Young see in free agency in 2026? He’s fortunate in that many of the best possible free agents (Dončić and Fox) have already found their new homes. He’s now at the top of the list in an offseason that could be flush with space. Someone will be interested at max money. Will it be a good team? Would Miami see him as a workable defensive fit next to Tyler Herro? How about a big-market blank slate? The Nets could bring Young in, and then use their mountain of draft picks to put the right team around him. Often, the best cap space teams are bad ones. Talent tends to win the day. Someone will pony up the cash. But the market might not be as interested in Young as he’d hope.
MacMahon’s reporting said it all: There hasn’t been a robust market for Young in the past. He isn’t a typical younger All-Star. He can’t just point to a great team and say “send me there” because that team may not be interested. If he wants out of Atlanta, that might mean landing in a similarly flawed situation.
Ironically, Sacramento is the first that comes to mind. I wrote about the fit in February. Sabonis unintentionally raised the possibility after Sacramento’s play-in loss to Dallas when he said, “The biggest thing is that we need a point guard. That’s for sure.” Young would have to change the way he plays. Sabonis isn’t a lob finisher. There’s not much defense here at all. But it would at least give him an All-Star-caliber teammate for once. Whether or not he could adjust to such a teammate would be up to him. Zach LaVine is a slightly tidier fit for a Hawks team that would seemingly want to hand more offense over to the wings. He’s a better shooter and mover than Young, albeit a far worse playmaker. He could keep them afloat until their pick debt to San Antonio expires.
If Phoenix wants a point guard to pair with Booker, there might be a three-way deal that sends Kevin Durant to his preferred destination and assets to the Hawks. A Young-Booker partnership makes more sense than it might seem on the surface. Phoenix’s core issue on offense was over-indexing on shot-making and under-indexing on shot-creation. Young can create easy shots. Booker can make hard ones. Put a decent defense around the two and you might not contend for championships, but could probably be at least somewhat respectable. Booker fit quite well with the last star point guard he played with, Chris Paul.
But it might take someone a bit desperate, a playoff disappointment that needs to take a big swing but lacks the assets to do so for a less flawed player. Take the Nuggets as an example. They’re capped out and lack tradable first-round picks. They don’t have an easy way to drastically alter their roster for next season, but firing their head coach and general manager three games before the end of the regular season suggests that they probably need to.
Would they consider a Young-for-Jamal Murray type of swap? The surface-level answer is that it might make both teams worse. The Hawks have limited creation and they’d be trading for an inferior creator. The Nuggets are a mess on defense and they’d be trading for a horrible defender. They’d be downgrading their shooting as well. The Hawks would be taking on a four-year max contract that comes with serious injury strings attached.
But Young could solve Denver’s bench issues. Young-led lineups, basically no matter who else they include, are at least good offensively. Murray could fit into that middle ground offensively that Young’s ball-dominance prevents. He’s talented enough to lead the Hawks in scoring, but comfortable enough off of the ball to give the wings more breathing room. This is the sort of move only two desperate teams make. If Young wants a trade one year before free agency and the Nuggets come up empty on all other trade talks, we might have two desperate traders.
That’s more or less where all parties involved here sit. The Young-Atlanta union grows less and less harmonious by the year, but neither side is equipped for a clean break, either. If there’s any hesitation on either side, trade rumors surely will pop back up, but frankly, if there was a deal that appealed to everyone involved, it probably would have happened by now.
