The Atlanta Hawks stand to benefit greatly from the league’s latest decision to pass over four-time All-Star Trae Young, leaving him off the 2024-25 All-NBA teams entirely.
The Hawks are heading toward a critical offseason, one in which they are deciding between hiring a new president of basketball operations or giving control to general manager Onsi Saleh and face several critical roster decisions.
No decision looms larger than what the Hawks plan to do with Young.
Young is heading into Year 4 of a five-year, $215.1 million contract extension. He will be eligible to sign a contract extension that would pay him up to $229 million.
He also has a player option for 2026-27, making next year functionally the final year of his current deal. There have not been many signs that the Hawks will part with Young this offseason, and his missing out on All-NBA could make such a decision even less likely.
Young is no longer eligible to sign a supermax contract.
That would have paid him $345 million, per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon on May 23, so Young missed out on $116 million over the life of his next deal, assuming he gets all that he can on it.
It is a significant “loss” for Young, but could be supremely beneficial for the Hawks. They no longer face the pressure of making such a decision, and can further explore what a future with and without Young looks like, knowing what they would have to work with in either case.
Young, for his part, has not spoken about his contract and has maintained that he wants to stay.
Finances and future fit have always been the driving factor in the speculation around Young, who even downplayed previous trade rumors, saying he was in contact with the front office.
Well, that front office is changing. What that means for Young and the rest of the roster remains unclear, and it will be that way until they make a final determination on their front office structure and who is calling the shots.
This news was unlikely to sway potential trade suitors for Young either way.
Trading Young would have also made him ineligible for a supermax contract, similar to what the Dallas Mavericks did in sending Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers.
That also takes pressure off the Hawks, saving them from the vitriol Mavericks brass has faced in the weeks and months since their decision. That does not mean the Hawks would avoid all backlash, but they would not be directly keeping a player from earning top dollar.
Notably, Young’s current deal was a $207 million agreement that rose after he earned All-NBA.