Trae Young is in Washington now, traded away in the prime of his career by the team that drafted him. At 27 years old, Young was supposed to be at the peak of his powers, leading a re-tooled Hawks to the top half of a wide-open Eastern Conference. Instead, he was traded for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert.
No draft picks. No swaps. Just a 34-year-old McCollum, who is still a fine player but on an out-sized contract at this point, and Kispert, a wing who can space the floor.
It is an ignominious end to the Young era in Atlanta. His downfall began in November 2021, when the Hawks started 4-5 after a surprising run to the Conference Finals. Asked about the tough start, Young said, “I'm not going to lie, it's a lot more boring than the playoffs. You got to find that motivation to play like the playoffs,” which is where my disdain for Young was born. Winning players find motivation in playoff losses because they failed. Young acted entitled.
He got Lloyd Pierce fired, then Nate McMillan, too. Now, with the Hawks sitting at 18-21, it was his turn to go.
Why now? And why for so little?
The answer, on the surface, is that the situation became untenable; that Young simply refused to adjust to the style that had been winning without him. But beyond that is the monster known as the collective bargaining agreement, which has dropped the “mess around” slider lower than ever, and increased the “find out” to an all-time high.
Simply put, the days of teams riding out fringe stars like Young are over.
Teams used to just hand out extensions to players like Young for a variety of reasons. First, they were so invested in the player that cutting the cord at 27 felt rash. It was a bit of the sunk cost fallacy, believing that they had gone this far, maybe he can find something in his prime that clicks with the right supporting cast.
Second, the only thing at stake was money, which a popular player like Young could generate with his highlight passes, occasional logo bomb, and “Ice Trae” celebrations. Even when fans were getting restless, players like Young could be the show, put up stats, and fans would be placated until they saw the promise in the next set of moves.
And third, teams could take those swings on the supporting cast because they could make trades and use exceptions to put a roster together. The worst consequence was paying a tax.
The second apron era is changing all of these dynamics. Teams cannot miss on big contracts anymore, which is where this turn in the Young saga truly began. The Hawks didn’t offer him an extension, not even a token one, in part because the evidence was already very loud that Young was not a winning player. Having someone like him tie up tens of millions of dollars in today’s NBA economy would be too risky. Once a player is determined to be part of the problem, he has to go.
Because there's more at stake than just money now. The luxury tax system is much more punitive, but so are the restrictions on what teams can do. They can’t go get a player via sign-and-trade without be hard-capped at the first apron. They are also hard-capped there if they use their full mid-level exception, make a trade with more than 100% matching salary, or use a trade exception created the previous season. All of these are the tools teams used to use to build rosters that hid the weaknesses of the Trae Youngs of the world. Turning a high-usage, non-winning player into a second or third option by acquiring better players is almost impossible now.
Teams don’t have to be over the second apron to be hurt by the CBA. It kills poor decisions early on in the process. People like me can say the Hawks were never getting anywhere with Young because he’s a losing player. I’ve said that so much it borders on shtick at this point. But in reality, that's only part of why Young is in Washington today. The other part of this, maybe even the biggest part, is that the system doesn’t allow for what it used to.
The Wizards, for what it’s worth, played their part in the CBA perfectly. They are the bad team with cap space and tradable assets taking on someone else’s star player, taking a flyer on the potential to find something Atlanta didn’t. They don’t have to worry about the apron stuff at the moment, so they can spend a few months kicking the tires on Young and seeing if the trade becomes some sort of epiphany. The system is designed to push stars out after a while and into the hands of the teams at the bottom.
This is what I expect to eventually happen in Boston, Oklahoma City, Denver, and every other champion that might come along. They don’t have losing players like Young (which is why they won championships), but their financial systems will eventually run out of the oxygen they need to keep the fire burning. Teams like the Wizards hoping to accelerate a rebuild, or teams like Detroit who are on the cusp, have assets, and just need that other guy to push them over the top, will be there waiting to capitalize.
This is what the system is designed to do. Even if some teams can be the organizational version of LeBron James at 41, no one fully escapes. Everyone will have to give in to it.
Young’s situation is more than a team having enough of a guy who could never fully deliver. It’s about a sudden desperation to escape it created by the new system. The Hawks had no choice at this point, and a lot of it is because the system made a lot of the choices for them.