Atlanta's Problem With the Trae Young Trade Is No Longer the Trade

I was half wrong yesterday.

The half I got wrong is the half I cared least about.

Yesterday I graded Atlanta's return for Trae Young as one rotation guard and a man the coach keeps sitting. Tonight Atlanta won 120-105 in Washington, in the first game Trae Young has ever played against the Hawks.

Here's the ledger.

CJ McCollum came off the bench in the building where he played 35 games and gave Atlanta 15 points, five assists and five rebounds. Plus-13.

Corey Kispert — the man the coach keeps sitting — played eight minutes, went 3 of 5, scored 9, and was plus-6.

Trae Young went 18 and 6 with four turnovers and finished minus-19, the worst mark of any Washington starter.

So the players half of my grade is wrong. Both men Atlanta got back were net positive on the one night this trade had an audience. The man Atlanta sent out was the worst starter on the floor.

The usage half is not wrong. It got worse.

Kispert put up nine points in eight minutes. That is 1.13 points per minute, the best rate of any Hawk who scored tonight. Alexander-Walker had 26 and sat at 0.81.

Now the honest part, because eight minutes is eight minutes. That is the smallest scoring sample on the roster, and a per-minute rate built on it tells you close to nothing about what thirty would look like. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Here's what it does tell you.

Tonight was Kispert's fifth appearance in Atlanta's nine games. He has no row on the injury board. There is still no published reason for any of it, and I'm still not inventing one.

He went 3 of 5. He didn't turn it over once. He was a plus. And no Hawk who got on the floor played fewer minutes than he did.

That is not a trade problem. That is a rotation problem, and it is the kind Atlanta can fix without picking up a phone.

I'm not calling this deal won. Washington are 4-4. Atlanta were missing Jalen Johnson for a second straight game and won anyway. Nine games into eighty-two is not where anybody hands down a verdict on seven years of a franchise point guard, and Young had a quiet night, not a bad one.

What I'll say is narrower than what I said yesterday. I walked into tonight with two complaints. I'm walking out with one.

Friday he's at State Farm Arena and it counts double — it's an NBA Cup group game, Atlanta's first of the season. Quin Snyder has forty-eight hours to decide whether the man who just went 3 of 5 sees more than eight minutes of it.

I'd put my byline on the answer being no.