For the first time since he was dealt from the only NBA home he had ever known, Trae Young is talking about it. And the four-time All-Star is leaning all the way into the role of a man the league has written off.
Speaking on The Pivot podcast from his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, Young addressed the midseason trade that sent him from the Atlanta Hawks to the Washington Wizards — and the avalanche of doubt that has followed him since. He did not sound discouraged. He sounded insulted.
"This is the most slept on I've been in my whole life," Young said. "Even when I was in high school, I wasn't this slept on." He acknowledged the criticism gets under his skin, then waved it off. "I can't get caught up in what people are saying now, as mad as it makes me. And what people say about me is not true. I'm probably just entering my prime."
His pitch for the rebuild in Washington is built on the same chip. "I know if we start winning — imagine the Wizards as a number one team in the East next year, what people gonna be saying," he said. "That's what changes the narrative."
The numbers behind the move help explain why Young arrived with something to prove. ESPN's Bobby Marks, breaking down the deal, called it about as clean a swap as the league sees: Young to Washington for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert, with no draft picks attached. Marks reported Washington was Young's preferred destination and described a surprisingly soft market for a player with a $46 million salary and a $49 million option looming. "How it ended" in Atlanta, Marks said, "was not very good." For the Hawks, getting off that future money cleared the books for a roster reset.
Young, for his part, refused to torch the city. "I never will hate Atlanta," he said. "Atlanta will forever be my second home." He revealed the trade did not blindside him — he and the franchise worked together to land him somewhere he wanted to go, and he pushed to make public that Washington was a choice, not a dumping ground.
That measured exit is exactly what a fellow former Hawk had urged. Months earlier, as the rumors swirled, Jeff Teague used his Club 520 podcast to send Young a direct message. "Don't fall in the trap. I fell in a trap when I was in Atlanta," Teague said, recalling how he played the villain on his way out. "I started saying stuff like, 'I ain't like it there anyway.' And that wasn't true, because I was home and I loved Atlanta." His advice was blunt: "Don't crash out, Trey. Your jersey is going to get retired."
Young appears to have taken it. The villain persona, he insisted, stops at the baseline. "I'm not a villain outside of the court," he said, describing himself as someone fans relate to — "I look in the crowd and I see a lot of people look just like me" — even as they curse him from their seats.
What still stings is a missed opportunity, not a city. Young pointed to the 2021 playoff run, when an ankle injury suffered in the Eastern Conference finals helped end Atlanta's push two wins shy of the Finals. "If what I know now, I would have played through my sprained ankle," he said. "We were two games away to go to the finals. You never know when that opportunity is going to come again. That's one thing that breaks me."
Now he is the veteran on a young team that lost for years and is, in his words, tired of it. Asked what he has to do to get back to where he belongs, Young did not flinch. "I already belong," he said. "I just got to go out there and do it again."
