Trae Young Isn’t The Star The Wizards Should Bet On

If you haven’t seen it already, Greg Finberg wrote about reports about Trae Young planning to decline a $48.9 million player option for the 2026-27 season and become an unrestricted free agent this summer. Go ahead and read that article and come back because I’m not going to rehash all the details — I’m here to look at what the Wizards should do.

The calculus for Young looks straightforward. He can get a new contract, the free agent pool is shallow, and he and his agent figure he’ll get a maximum contract. I suspect they’re correct. Several teams have money to spend and want to get better. And there’s a still pervasive view that Young is an elite offensive weapon.

The Wizards are at least somewhat in agreement — team presdient Michael Winger said they viewed Young as the top free agent this summer, so they traded for him to get him early.

But being the best free agent this summer is not the same thing as being worth a maximum contract. Being an elite offensive weapon (assuming that’s true) is not the same thing as being an elite player. Or being worth a max deal.

The question the Wizards front office needs to answer is whether the team would be better off over the next 3-5 years paying Young a maximum salary than they would be to either a) negotiate a lesser deal (if possible), or b) letting him depart and using the financial flexibility to acquire future assets.

I think the Wizards essentially answered this question when they traded for him. And you’ve probably already guessing which direction I’m leaning, but let’s go through it anyway.

Let’s start with this: the Wizards paid next to nothing of any meaningful value to acquire Young. They gave up Corey Kispert, a limited wing who offers good shooting and not much else, and CJ McCollum, a good player mostly in the deal due to his large salary and expiring contract.

That the Wizards got Young for so little is meaningful in at least couple ways. First, it’s testament to Young’s perceived value at a maximum-level salary. And second, the acquisition cost is low enough that the Wizards don’t need to think about it when making the should he stay or should he go decision. Their are no future picks dangling overhead — they gave up nothing of consequence.

There was a time when Young really was among the game’s best players. In my all-around production metric, Player Production Average, where average is 100 and higher is better, Young scored a 195 one season, which followed a 160, which followed a 165. That’s serious production — All-Star level in that 160s range, All-NBA bordering on MVP-conversation level at 195.

But that 195 was in 2021-22. Four years ago. Since then, four seasons, 7,606 minutes and a 142 PPA. Still pretty good but a long way from that elite status of 2022. During that time, the Atlanta Hawks were better on offense with Young on the floor by about the same amount they were worse on defense. In terms of driving wins, the Hawks were about the same whether he played or not.

Over that span, Young’s offensive possession usage stayed high while his efficiency sagged back to around average. It’s kind of impressive that he was able to remain even that efficient given his heavy offensive load and small stature. It’s also apparent that the drop in efficiency makes him less able to drive high-level team offense.

Young is a genius passer, though the creativity does come with turnovers. The shift in officiating has contributed to a modest reduction in trips to the free throw line, which is a further drag on his efficiency. The big issue is his shooting — subpar conversion rate on twos, and below average shooting on threes.

Some of the three-point shooting is the level of defensive attention he gets. Some of it shot selection. Which is to say, he takes a lot of hard shots — extreme range, heavily covered, stepbacks off the dribble. Sometimes all of those things on the same shot.

What happened in his brief appearance in a Wizards uniform last season is barely worth talking about. It totaled five games and 104 minutes, and while he looked pretty good personally, a) the sample size was too small to be meaningful, b) the team was worse on offense and better on defense when he was on the floor, and c) the sample size was too small to make item B mean anything.

That’s the past. The Wizards are buying the future — ages 28 to 31 or 32. Broadly speaking, this is an okay time to spend heavily on a player. The “normal” career arc is for a player to peak in their mid-20s (for a smaller guard like Young, peaks typically happen a little earlier) and then maintain into their early 30s.

Young’s career arc is already more like an exaggerated version of the small guard trajectory than the broader NBA population. Meaning: his best season was probably that 195 at age 23. His production has been down since then. Still pretty good, but not close to that elite level.

I haven’t talked much about Young’s defense, but it has to be addressed. Because, depending on the metric you use, he could well be the NBA’s worst defender. I’m not quite willing to go with absolute worst, but it’s fair to say he’s among the worst. As Bum Phillips once said of Earl Campbell, “He may not be in a class by himself, but it don’t take long to call roll.”

Young’s offense is still good enough that he’s probably a net positive overall — at least in the regular season — despite the defensive woes. We can worry about the postseason when the Wizards get back there.

At this stage in the rebuild, I think it’d be a poor decision to give Young a maximum contract, even if it’s for “only” three years. In my estimation, it would instantly be a bad contract that would saddle Washington with an expensive, declining player for however long the contract runs.

If Young can truly get a maximum contract from another team, the smart business decision would be to do one of two things: 1) facilitate the move and try to extract draft picks or young players, or 2) let him leave. The financial flexibility will pay off — there are always more opportunities to be had, and they’ll probably come along sooner than we’d think.

Bottom line: the Wizards are trying to build a contender. Now is not the time to make a multi-year, $200 million dollar bet on a small guard who’s already declining.