The Hawks are in a bad spot. If anyone is denying that, they need to take their Trae Young jersey off and take a long hard look in the mirror. Everything is on the table this offseason, including trading their superstar point guard, and one NBA executive believes he will be a target for the Lakers.
An NBA Executive believes the Lakers will target Trae Young
“They went out and got tradeable pieces. If the Hawks don’t make a move in the summer, the Lakers would be a possibility next season… I also don’t buy that every guy who signs with Klutch is going to the Lakers, that… pic.twitter.com/00GGUpmIEA
— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) April 21, 2023
At this point, 2021 is a distant memory. The Hawks aren’t contenders; they are nowhere close, and Trae Young has been almost unbearable to watch in his last eight playoff games.
I’m not one of those guys who believe Young is the problem, or that he can’t win. However, it’s becoming overwhelmingly obvious that he can’t be the #1 guy on a championship contender. He needs help, and unfortunately, the Hawks haven’t done a good enough job of surrounding him with talent. They have signed a boatload of guys to long-term deals, and almost all of them have turned out poorly. Now, they have a ton of bad contracts on their hands and almost no way to improve the roster significantly enough to become contenders again.
For that reason, Atlanta has to at least be considering trading Trae Young to the highest bidder and re-tooling the roster. That will likely mean a rebuild, but it’s probably what’s best for the franchise. Unfortunately, I don’t think they have the guts to be honest with themselves and do what needs to be done. They want to operate under the delusion that this is fixable. It isn’t.
Trae Young shouldn’t be traded for a laundry machine. He’s one of the best point guards in basketball and would absolutely make Lebron James and the Lakers the favorites to take home the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of the season if he were traded to Los Angeles. However, if a deal is going to get done, the compensation must be significant. The narratives around Trae Young and his inability to win are false. He just can’t win in Atlanta, where the ownership has failed him more times than I can count.
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Photographer: Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire
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