Ohm YoungmisukOct 27, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseOhm Youngmisuk has covered the Giants, Jets and the NFL since 2006. Prior to that, he covered the Nets, Knicks and the NBA for nearly a decade. He joined ESPNNewYork.com after working at the New York Daily News for almost 12 years and is a graduate of Michigan State University. Follow him on Twitter »Follow on X
Trae Young shows off the range on trey (0:15)Trae Young shows off the range on trey (0:15)
But Trae Young, sitting near the baseline of the two practice courts, can always hear the noise and chatter that surrounds him.
Entering his eighth season, Young is beloved in Atlanta. But his critics, from Patrick Beverley to anonymous online trolls, constantly chirp.
Young can practically recite the gripes against him: “I can’t adjust my game. I can’t play with this guy or this guy.
After coming within two wins of reaching the NBA Finals in 2020-21, Young and the Hawks have been in four straight play-in tournaments, losing in the first round twice before failing to make it to the postseason the past two years.
Young said he goes into every season thinking it is his most important one, but he admits this one feels “special” and is “definitely the biggest season for me.” He is in his prime, and the reigning assists champ has his best roster yet. Young, who has a $49 million player option for next season, wants to show Atlanta he is a superstar talent worth the four-year, $229 million max extension he is eligible for.
But in this restrictive second-apron era, Atlanta will wait on an extension. By waiting, the Hawks can see how things go with this retooled roster and still maintain flexibility in case things don’t go well, giving them the option to take a new route and build around a promising young core of developing talent. The Hawks and Kristaps Porzingis are also going to wait on a potential extension and see how this season goes.
For Young, the All-Star can explore his options next summer if he does not get an extension later this season. That means he’ll have to get used to not having control of his immediate future.
“If certain things don’t go my way as far as injuries, health and stuff that I can’t control, that may be the man above telling me there’s another plan for me. I’m focused on making sure all my guys, Quin [Snyder] included, get taken care of and succeed.”
This summer, new general manager Onsi Saleh directed one of the most impressive offseasons in the NBA, adding Porzingis, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Luke Kennard while also acquiring the New Orleans Pelicans’ unprotected 2026 first-rounder, a potential high lottery pick in a deep class.
Young’s task is to blend those vets with rising Hawks like Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, Zaccharie Risacher and Onyeka Okongwu and lead Atlanta to contention. Injuries have left the East open for the taking with stars like the Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum and Indiana Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton sidelined.
That and an enhanced roster has given Young a prime chance to return to the playoff stage, prove he’s still the franchise player worth building around and silence the doubters. He believes the talent around him will allow him to show he is more than what people think.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions of me,” Young said. “They’ll get changed over time, and I truly believe that.
BEFORE THE START of the Hawks’ second day of training camp, the team’s weight room is livelier than normal. Young, now one of the older vets on the team at 27, is jumping around, high-fiving teammates and getting them pumped up before hitting the weights.
Two weeks earlier, Patrick Beverley was questioning Young’s ability to lead and win. In a brief online beef, the former Clipper said he talked to some of Young’s former teammates who questioned his leadership and didn’t like playing with the point guard.
Young responded on his podcast by telling Beverley to “state your source” and that he was never intimidated when facing “Patty Bev” — a standout defender during his 12 seasons.
Current Hawks players describe Young as a leader who cares, a guy who organized their group text chain to promote camaraderie on one of the league’s youngest rosters. In a 111-107 win over the Orlando Magic on Friday, a smiling Young celebrated with rookie Asa Newell during a timeout after finding him for a 3 and an alley-oop dunk in a tight fourth quarter. It was as if the point guard was the one who just scored his first two professional baskets.
“Last year, he made tremendous [strides] with the leadership component,” Saleh told reporters before camp started. “I thought he was great playing off the ball, just his energy towards the game. His teammates, I thought he was great last year [with them].
“We’re super confident in him just helping lead our guys and playing with a guy like Onyeka, Kristaps, Luke and Nickeil, having more weapons around him, too. I think it’s super exciting, but just the natural development of a star player. He’s getting better every year, and we expect that to happen this season as well.”
Young and the Hawks will need patience, though. As seen on opening night when the Hawks were stunned 138-118 by the Toronto Raptors, there will be an adjustment period with all their new pieces and moments of adversity with the Hawks playing nine of their first 14 games on the road.
That stretch includes two key games against Orlando, another team that had an impressive offseason and is looking to rise in the East. Already, the Hawks have had to play two consecutive games without Porzingis (flu-like symptoms) and Risacher (right ankle sprain). Johnson (right ankle sprain) joined them on the sideline during Saturday’s loss to the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
But their offseason moves gave them much-needed depth that the Hawks are hoping will be the difference between contending in the East and being a middling play-in team yet again.
Those moves came with an assist from the franchise point guard. When Young knew the Hawks were going after Alexander-Walker and Kennard in free agency, he called both to recruit them and sell them on the city of Atlanta.
Alexander-Walker was told stars from teams courting him during free agency would reach out. But it was only Young who called him multiple times.
Alexander-Walker, who is coming off two straight Western Conference Finals appearances in Minnesota with Anthony Edwards, sees some similarities between Young and Edwards in how their confidence and competitiveness can rub some the wrong way.
“Ant has a very strong personality,” Alexander-Walker told ESPN. “Trae has a strong personality. It just comes out different. And so when guys are very self-confident and aware of who they are, to the untrained eye that could be arrogance. It could be cockiness.
“Trae has confidence. Ant, Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander], Luka [Doncic] has confidence. … But [Young] still wears a heavy burden of pressure. And he’s had success through his pressure.”
The Hawks designed their offseason to get Porzingis, Alexander-Walker and Kennard to take some pressure off Young, who has had to reshape the way he plays. Snyder has been emphasizing pushing tempo and having Young pass the ball up the floor to create early offense for wings like Johnson, Risacher and Daniels, who recently signed a four-year, $100-million extension.
He also will have Young play more off ball, passing to eventually get the ball back for an easier shot — similar to Stephen Curry with the Golden State Warriors — instead of having to expend a ton of energy creating his own shot against defenders.
For the 7-2 Porzingis, he says his “main mission” is to make life easier for his new point guard — and it’s not his first time working with a dynamic playmaking point guard. He played alongside Luka Doncic in Dallas for two and a half seasons, but the two were not the fit Dallas had hoped for.
“The playmaking, they both have it at the highest of levels,” Porzingis told ESPN of Doncic and Young. “They do some similar stuff, honestly. Their builds are different. But they’re both masterminds at reading the basket, anticipating what’s going to happen, reading the game, anticipating what’s going to happen.
Porzingis and Doncic ran 405 pick-and-pop plays together with Doncic as the ballhandler in 2019-20 and 2020-21, second-most among all combinations and trailing just Young and John Collins, according to ESPN Research. But Young has not had a center like the man dubbed “The Unicorn.”
Already a master of the floater with 752 in his career — the most in the NBA since tracking began in 2013-14 per GeniusIQ — Young is looking forward to unveiling new wrinkles in his game alongside Porzingis.
“I haven’t had a guy like him in the NBA,” Young said. “So I think you’ll be able to really see what different things that I can do with a guy that can pick and pop and spread the defense, spread the five man out to 30 feet. I think you’ll be able to see a lot of different things that I haven’t been able to show in the past, too.
“Hopefully this year I get a lot more catch-and-shoot shots, something that a lot people don’t think I can do.”
Young is used to having the ball in his hands, having dribbled 226,906 times, the most of any player since he entered the league in 2018. But he is willing to sacrifice scoring as he focuses on getting his teammates more involved. His scoring average dipped from a career-high 29.6 points per game in 2019-20 to 24.2 last season.
Johnson — who opened the season with 22 points, eight assists and seven rebounds — is emerging as a playmaker Young can rely on. Young mentioned how he and Johnson were building chemistry together before the forward suffered a season-ending shoulder injury on Jan. 23.
“I want a lot of people to write us off,” Johnson, now fully recovered from surgery, told ESPN. “What we’re building behind the scenes, it’s something special.”
WITH PORZINGIS AND Risacher sidelined in Orlando, Young still found himself having enough help to erase a 14-point deficit and stun the Magic.
“I thought he managed the game as well as I’ve seen him manage a game late,” Snyder said of Young. “Just directing people where to go. And our guys were listening, too.”