ATLANTA — Two jarring sounds marked the end of Trae Young’s homecoming at State Farm Arena: the clang of leather-on-iron as Young’s final shot bounced off the rim, and the piercing blare of the final horn, sealing the Washington Wizards’ 139-132 loss. At that very moment, Young found himself standing a few strides from the Atlanta Hawks’ bench, so that’s where the first hugs were dispersed.
Hawks coach Quin Snyder. Assorted ex-teammates and staffers. Team owner Tony Ressler and his family. Security guards he got to know during his nearly eight years in a Hawks uniform. Directly above Young, in the rafters, hung the five uniform numbers retired by the franchise, and where someday, maybe, his old No. 11 might hang as well.
“I didn’t really get to say goodbye when I left in that trade,” Young said of the January deal that sent him from the Hawks to the Wizards, “and then I didn’t get to see or talk to anybody for a long time. So that was nice.”
The duality of Trae Young, as they know well in Atlanta, means you accept his flaws as the cost of all the greatness he brings, and both sides were on display Friday night. He scored 23 points and dished out 10 assists, both slightly above his season averages, as the Wizards, with superstar big man Anthony Davis sidelined with an ankle injury, fought valiantly behind Young and Kyshawn George (33 points and seven assists).
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But Young also committed eight turnovers, several of them leading to easy buckets for the Hawks, and the last of which, an errant pass with 1:06 left in the game with the Wizards down four, proved particularly crucial.
If Friday night was a referendum on Young’s standing with the Atlanta fans 10 months after the trade, the results were inconclusive. He was the face of the Hawks franchise for the better part of eight seasons, arguably the team’s biggest superstar (and inarguably its leading scorer) since Dominique Wilkins. And yet the franchise in January had no problem sending him off to the Wizards for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert in what was essentially a salary dump.
The return of the one-time face of the franchise in another team’s uniform is commonplace enough in this itinerant era of professional sports as to be almost cliche: the pregame hugs, the video tribute, the warm ovation, the waves/blown kisses/heart finger-gesture to the crowd. Young, in fact, had already been through all that, when he returned to State Farm Arena in February with the Wizards for a game in which he did not dress.
This time, everything was muted. No video tribute. No standing ovation. Just a perfunctory reciting of Young’s name during pregame introductions, followed by a tepid ovation tinged with a few boos.
“Any time there’s a breakup with a team, it’s never 100%,” Young said Friday morning after the Wizards’ shootaround. “But I’ve got a lot of love for Atlanta. My daughter was born here. I have a lot of family here, a lot of friends. I still get a lot of love here, and I think that will forever be the case.”
The body of work Young has authored across his career puts him among elite company. In NBA history, he ranks third all-time in assists per game, behind only Magic Johnson and John Stockton, and he is the only other player, along with Oscar Robertson, to have averaged at least 25 points and nine assists per game over an entire career. On the other hand, he is also the NBA’s all-time leader in turnovers per game, at 4.2.
That duality also informed Young’s relationship with Hawks fans. It was a complicated one, as might be expected between a fan base starved for a title and a singular star who could only manage to get the team three-quarters of the way there. In some circles, it is still held against him that the Hawks, on draft day 2018, traded away the rights to No. 3 overall pick Luka Doncic in order to move back two spots and take Young at No. 5 (and gain a future first-round pick), as if Young had anything to do with that.
He almost singlehandedly lifted the franchise to national prominence, taking them to Game 6 of the 2020-21 Eastern Conference Finals — the deepest playoff run in franchise history. But when the Hawks failed to advance past the first round in any subsequent season, he took the bulk of the blame, hearing the same knocks he’s been hearing his whole career: too small, too ball-dependent, too little defense.
Young played only five games for the Wizards last season following the trade, through some murky combination of Young’s various ailments and the Wizards’ own reluctance, near the end of a three-year tank job, to rush him back. Nonetheless, in July they signed him to a four-year $213 million contract that was widely panned around the league.
Though he was the clear face of the franchise in Atlanta, what the Wizards are asking of Young is more complex. He’s neither their biggest superstar (that would be Davis) nor the franchise cornerstone (that would be rookie AJ Dybantsa). But at their home opener, it was Young whom the organization handed the microphone at center court, asking him to say a few words to welcome the fans to the dawn of the Wizards’s new era.
Mostly, what the Wizards are asking of Young is to be himself, but just a little less — to subjugate his ego, to dial back the heliocentric role he played in Atlanta in order to share the ball with the most talented collection of teammates he has ever played with, some of whom need to ball in their hands.
Young’s usage rate was over 30% in five of his seven full seasons in Atlanta, peaking at a whopping 34.9 percent in 2019-20, but this year it’s at a career-low 24.5. He’s also taking roughly five fewer shots per game than his career norm. That isn’t accidental: the Wizards are asking Young to play off the ball more than he is used to in order to maximize Dybansta’s preternatural on-ball skills and downhill motor.
“Yeah, it’s an adjustment. But it’s not a tough one,” Young said Friday morning. Being willing to change, he said, “is not something I’ve had to learn. It’s something I’ve always done. I know my usage rate is down. That’s not a problem.”
Because of his still-elite playmaking abilities, Young generates more open shots and scoring opportunities for the Wizards’ younger players than they would have without him. But because of his size (6-foot-2) and defense, they have to surround him with plus defenders. That’s the duality of Trae Young.
“I like what he’s giving us,” Wizards Coach Brian Keefe said of Young’s defense. “We obviously have some size behind him to protect him. And were doing things schematically to put him in position to be successful. But his mindset has actually been terrific. I like the effort he’s put out there. He’s got an ability to steal the ball. He’s been doing that for us, disrupting the game, because he knows he’s got people behind him to protect him.”
After Friday night’s loss, Young referenced his turnovers, saying, “I didn’t take care of the ball well enough today.” But he also dismissed all of his stats as secondary to his main task.
“I want to focus on the young guys and getting them the ball,” he said. “I know I’m going to have my time, and I’ll be aggressive. There are times I’ll have really good nights. But my main focus is not that. It’s how to help our young guys play well in winning situations…. We’re going to be in a lot of them this year.”
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