The Wizards' Weirdest Experiment Starts Now
How the Trae Young Wizards might work...or not
Well, out of all the trades I’ve ever seen, that was certainly one of them.
After literal years of questioning the Trae Young experience in Atlanta — with massive ups and equally massive downs — the Hawks decided that they didn’t want to deal with Trae’s impending (potential) free agency, opting to deal him to the Wizards. And, in a notion that would shock anyone who you explained this trade to two years ago, all the Wizards had to do was send over a 34-year-old CJ McCollum and a version of Corey Kispert who is averaging under 10 points per game.
No picks, no swaps, just a 2K Trade Machine-generated deal. Ethical trades, if you will.
Originally, I was going to write about this from both sides, a “The Hawks and Wizards’ New Eras” sort of thing. However, we’ve already seen what the Hawks looked like without Trae due to his injury earlier in the season, and it was surprisingly good. They’ve also got more targets to throw darts at, given the rumors about Anthony Davis (or not, given his new injury?). To cap it all off, I’ve raved about Jalen Johnson’s supernova evolution enough — hence, we’re not going to go with the original concept.
The Wizards, though, are an extremely interesting case. Instead of opting for a #1 option via the draft, they’ve chosen to accelerate their rebuild with one of the most polarizing stars in the league for pennies on the dollar. Let’s explore why it might — and might not — work out.
