AUGUST 3, 7:37am: Young’s extension will include an early termination option after the fourth year, according to RealGM (Twitter link). An ETO is similar to a player option, so Young will have the ability to opt out and sign a new deal in 2026.
AUGUST 2, 11:02pm: The Hawks and Young are in agreement on a five-year, maximum-salary extension, agent Omar Wilkes tells Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
Wojnarowski pegs the projected value of Young’s deal at $207MM, which would mean a starting salary worth 30% of a $119MM cap in 2022/23. That suggests that Atlanta has indeed put Rose Rule language in the deal, but Young will still need to meet the criteria to earn that amount. If he fails to earn All-NBA honors next season, the extension would be worth a projected $172.55MM.
AUGUST 2, 3:59pm: The Hawks and star guard Trae Young are expected to finalize an agreement on a maximum-salary contract extension shortly after he becomes extension-eligible on Monday night, reports Jeff Schultz of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The move had been widely expected, as Young has emerged as the cornerstone of a Hawks team that made a surprising Eastern Conference Finals run this season.
He averaged 25.3 PPG, 9.4 APG, and 3.9 RPG in 63 regular season games (33.7 MPG) in 2020/21, then helped lead Atlanta past the Knicks and Sixers in the first two rounds of the playoffs before suffering a foot injury in the Eastern Finals vs. Milwaukee.
Young remains under his rookie contract for one more season and will earn $8.33MM in 2021/22. His extension would go into effect in ’22/23.
The exact value of that deal would depend on where the cap lands for the 2022/23 season. However, a conservative estimate would result in a five-year deal of approximately $168MM.
That number could increase to about $201.5MM if the Hawks include Rose Rule language that would bump Young’s starting salary to 30% of the cap instead of 25%. However, he’d have to earn an All-NBA spot this coming season to trigger that increase.
Young is one of a number of young stars entering the final year of their respective rookie contracts who could receive a maximum-salary extension shortly after the NBA’s new league year begins.
Luka Doncic, who has already qualified for the 30% max, is in line to get a five-year extension, though it likely won’t be finalized until after the Olympics. Multiple reports have indicated the Thunder will likely lock up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to a max-salary extension, and Marc Stein identified Deandre Ayton (Suns) and Michael Porter Jr. (Nuggets) as other strong candidates for max extensions.
MPJ on a max deal?
Every day of the week & twice on Sundays & you will never go wrong with that my friend!!!
Trae + Delon + Skylar + Sharife + Cam + Kev + Bogdan + DeAndre + Jalen + John + Danilo + Nathan + Clint + Onyeka = dynasty in the making… All we need now is to resign either Tony Snell or Solomon Hill & use our MLE on a big like Bobby Portis, Zach Collins, Nerlens Noel or Daniel Theis
Trae is a very good point guard but he’s nowhere near a generational talent and there’s no one else on the Hawks even close to his talent level. If the Hawks are going to be a dynasty they need to consolidate their talent and swing for the fences with Godfather offer for another star. The Hawks got too good too fast to become great, they needed to suck and get a couple more high picks 1st.
I think this groups ceiling is the pre-Kawhi Raptors. Be very good for awhile, swing a huge trade for a disgruntled star, possibly win a championship then slowly fade away and start over again.
Well that was depressing. Somewhere between those two
Building your team around a star who cannot defend hasn’t been a very successful approach in the last umpteen years.
Yeah you’re right. Steph Curry says hello.
Except for Steph’s 3 rings in the Bay right? And Isiah’s 2 rings in Detroit right? And Magic’s 5 rings in LA & Bird’s 3 rings in Boston? Except for those 13 times?
Perhaps Curry is not a terrific defender, but certainly he is not below average and was not a liability at that end. Trae, at the moment, is just one of the worst defenders in the league.
Steph is definitely a below average defender smh where have u been for his entire career? Trae & Steph are both among the weakest defenders in the league & this is not breaking news
You can check the stats. Just to put an example, in 2015-2016 he was 10th in the league in defensive win shares and 13th in defensive plus minus. Indeed, GSW was a very good defensive team overall, but Curry was certainly doing his bit. You are talking about myths, not facts.
You’re right Otagar. All you have to do is REALLY watch Curry play. He’s a more than decent defender, and a very smart one too.
It’s a lot easier to play defense when you’re surrounded by so many elite defenders like Curry was 5 years ago. Most of them are gone now, so he won’t have the luxury of guarding the other team’s worst player like he used to when his team was winning championships.
Guess you didn’t watch the 2016 nba finals when the Cavs were salivating every time they could get Curry on a switch.
Steph started out abhorrently bad on that end, and slowly improved to where he was considered ok for a while. In between, improvements from Klay thompson, additions of Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, and development of Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green around him, as well as Andeew Bogut, significantly helped…I’ve been high on Kevin Huerter since he was drafted. They have some of that same thing going in Atlanta, although the improvements defensively from Trae havent been there, but the other pieces are good enough, namely guys they’ve added just in the last year or so, including these last few days, that it doesnt matter as much
As I said going into the playoffs last year, they can cause some matchup problems for some teams
Stpeh is a terrible defender
Young’s defense is far worse than any of those you cited and, unlike Curry, he doesn’t have the size to compensate or even improve much. Young’s size is a real handicap in a league of increasingly bigger, longer guards. Even a defensive stalwart like Davion Mitchell has real concerns about how his D would translate due to size. Thomas played in a different era of smaller guards.
Bird was one the best help defender the league has ever seen.
Ya I was going to say, those names were kind of off. Isiah was also a very good defender, and Magic had length, and did his job, maybe struggling against certainty really quick guards. Bird was a very good defender as well…
That being said, you can have 1 or 2 players/scorers that arent strong defenders, if they’re surrounded by strong defenders. We just saw Phoenix get to the finals. The Heat struggled defensively at guard, but the pieces around them allowed them to get 2 wins in the finals, even through multiple injuries. Even Cleveland got away with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, although there were extenuating circumstances there, but they had a lot of good pieces around them. Go back to the Spurs with tony Parker and Ginobli, and look at the guys they had around them, with Duncan as one of the greatest defenders of all time, and Bruce Biwens, among others, and then later Kawhi, Danny Green, etc…Dirk had shawn Marion, Deshawn Stevenson, Corey Brewer and Tyson Chandler…obviously the point being you need guys that can help minimize each others deficiencies
This dynasty stuff is funny.
Lol clearly you haven’t seen the Hawks very much. Trae’s career so far is very similar to Isiah Thomas who was clearly a “generational talent”. And I don’t even expect u to know much about the rest of the squad if u don’t know about Trae. We obv don’t need to “swing for the fences” bc 1st off this is basketball not baseball & 2ndly we just showed that we already have more than enough talent. Only a couple of our core guys have even reached their primes yet. The rest are still improving by leaps & bounds, it would be dumb to give them up before we see how good they can be together. The pre Kawhi Raps were literally the best team in the East & only prime Bron could stop them. We’re younger & better overall than even that team, which was obviously great in it’s own right. Lol @ u thinking we didn’t get enough top picks. You should maybe go look at the Hawks roster right fast. We got 4 top10 picks in the last few yrs & that doesn’t include guys like John Collins, Jalen Johnson, Kevin Huerter & Sharife Cooper who all have lottery pick type talent. Here’s a free tip, don’t tell anyone else that you think a lack of young talent is the Hawks problem lol they will instantly lose any respect they may have had for u as a basketball fan
Since it’s basketball would you rather have me say “chuck up a prayer at the buzzer?”
That’s a long drawn out way of agreeing with me. The Hawks got lucky. Every few years teams make Cinderella playoff runs. The Celtics and Blazers a few years back, the Magic with Howard, the Suns before Nash..no big deal it happens all the time. Same as the Hawks and Suns this year.
There is only one guy on Atlanta that being Young that’s a top talent. Much like Dallas with Doncic Trae Young elevated them too quickly and they didn’t get enough top talent. While they have some very talented players the only one I see as maybe developing into someone who’d you want as a 3rd option on a contender is Hunter. Reddish and Huerter could turn out to decent role players. They need someone else to put them over the top.
Looks like Trae will lose almost $35M if/when he fails to be 3rd Team All-NBA next year.
Good for him. The way he improved from the beginning of his career was super impressive and exceptional. That being said, there were a couple of more rule changes that coincided with that at the time, and they’ve added pieces around him to help him/mitigate a lot of his weaknesses. I do feel like he is 1 or 2 guys to be officiated differently than everyone else in the league, but he is still nowhere close to as bad with that as the other person, and is at least entertaining to watch. As I said in another article, they’ve really done a good job of putting this team together, with a clear objective, and I think that will allow him to get more accolades. For that team, he is a good fit.
“Wojnarowski pegs” hell yeah he does.