The Sacramento Kings are somewhat unique among teams traditionally looking to trading superstars. Usually, the correct course after your best player asks to leave is to initiate a rebuild. It’s sort of a common-sense tactic. If you weren’t good enough to win at a rate that could convince that player to stay, what are the odds that you’ll do any better after they’re gone? This is part of why trade packages for players like De’Aaron Fox are typically built around draft picks. The idea is that the team landing the star improves now, and then the team giving that player away reaps the benefits later.
If the Kings were operating optimally from the perspective of championship equity, that is probably the approach they’d take. Get a haul for Fox. Cash out on Domantas Sabonis near the peak of his value. See what’s out there for DeMar DeRozan and Malik Monk. Clear the decks, make a few lottery picks, and then try to get back into the playoff mix a few years down the line. But Sacramento isn’t a normal team. The Kings have made the playoffs once since 2006. This is not a team or fanbase that’s going to stomach an all-out tank after tasting success for the first time in nearly two decades. Even if they could, do you really trust the Kings to get one right?
Unsurprisingly, this means that Sacramento wants win-now pieces back for Fox, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. This poses a bit of a problem for Fox’s preferred destination, the San Antonio Spurs. San Antonio is perfectly equipped to make a standard star trade. They have more draft picks than they know what to do with and an impressive collection of young prospects headlined by No. 4 overall pick Stephon Castle. They’re in great shape to help someone rebuild. But to help them win now? That’s a tougher sell. Even with Victor Wembanyama in place, San Antonio is a sub-.500 team.
Therefore, if Fox is going to get to the Spurs as he hopes, we’re going to need a third team to bridge this gap. Fortunately, there’s a sensible one staring us in the face. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Atlanta Hawks.
Why the Hawks make sense
If there is a single team in all of basketball that should want access to San Antonio’s assets, it is Atlanta. The Spurs control the next three Hawks first-round picks thanks to Atlanta’s ill-fated Dejounte Murray acquisition a few summers ago. As the Nets showed us last summer, teams value no first-round picks more than their own because those are the only picks whose value a team has any degree of control over. For Atlanta, those picks San Antonio is currently holding hostage are the key to a rebuild. They just haven’t had anything enticing enough to convince the Spurs to give them up. But now, the Kings might … if the Hawks have anything Sacramento wants badly enough in return.
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It is at this point that I’d like to remind you, reader, that Trae Young, like De’Aaron Fox, is slated for 2026 free agency. You could be forgiven for not knowing that. Unlike Fox, speculation about Young’s future has been minimal this season. There has been very little reporting about it in either direction. We don’t know, for now, how excited Young is about a possible future in Atlanta, nor do we know how eager the Hawks are to pay Young the max contract he will almost certainly seek.
If the two sides here want to stay together long-term? This conversation ends before it begins. We should point out, though, that the Hawks reportedly did explore Young trades during the offseason.
“The simple fact of the matter is that if there was a real market for Trae Young, he’d be somewhere else right now,” ESPN’s Tim MacMahon said on The Hoop Collective podcast over the summer.
Atlanta ultimately elected to deal Dejounte Murray instead and got a significant haul for him: Two first-round picks and All-Defense candidate Dyson Daniels. Daniels is extension-eligible after the season. Jalen Johnson has already received his long-term deal. The Hawks are going to be expensive even with a cost-controlled No. 1 overall pick in Zaccharie Risacher.
Maybe Atlanta is willing to pay up to keep Young. He’s the only consistent shot-creator on the roster. But despite some very high highs, the Hawks are just 22-25 on the season. They are getting outscored during Young’s minutes and have never been able to defend at a high level with him on the court. This group has plenty of room for internal improvement. It is very young and enormously athletic. But if the Hawks see a ceiling here, Sacramento presents a rare opportunity to pivot. Atlanta couldn’t find a trade partner for Young last offseason in part because demand for high-usage guards that don’t defend has never been lower. Sacramento badly needs such a player if it is giving up Fox and plans to try to keep winning.
Atlanta’s direction post-Young would be a bit muddy. They’d never score any points with the rest of this current roster, plain and simple. The Hawks have averaged a pathetic 101 points per 100 possessions when Young is off the floor this season. Young’s playmaking is what makes lineups with very little shooting viable offensively. But if the Hawks can get control of their picks back from San Antonio, there would be a benefit to short-term losing. Atlanta’s defense would also probably be great. It is allowing 107.8 points per 100 possessions in the non-Young minutes this season, which would be just a shade below the No. 2-ranked Clippers on the season.
There would be enormous growing pains if the Hawks put the ball in the hands of Johnson and Daniels and Risacher next season, but doing so could bear significant fruit down the line, Just look at what a season of unusually high usage has done for Jaren Jackson Jr. offensively. The next year or two could, in short, be devoted to developing the youth that is already in place and adding to it with their own draft picks, plus anything else they could extract from San Antonio.
What’s in it for the Kings?
The Sacramento fit is tricky on a few levels. Would Young want to re-sign there? Fox doesn’t, but Fox’s stock around the league is much higher. Case in point: Virtually all of the reporting surrounding Young’s availability last year stated that San Antonio wasn’t interested. Fox can afford to be picky. He knows he has a max contract coming in 2026 and is seemingly trying to position himself to get one while still competing for championships. Would Young turn down a max contract if offered one? Does he have better options on the open market?
The free-agent destination with obvious appeal for him would be Miami, which is reportedly hoarding 2026 cap space as it seeks a Jimmy Butler trade. But Young and Tyler Herro are not viable together defensively. Would they really max out Young with Herro thriving in a similar role? Would they trade Herro? The Los Angeles teams could both have 2026 cap space as well, but both come with caveats. The Clippers have reoriented themselves around defense and just declined to max out Paul George. Splurging on Young would be a complete 180 on the direction that is working for them now. The Lakers have no guiding philosophy beyond “get famous players,” but without knowing where they’ll be as a team by then, making any predictions about their plans feels premature. The Lakers, like the Spurs, have reportedly shown little interest in Young in the past. There’s probably a max contract out there somewhere for Young, whether it’s with the Hawks or another team. But if he can get certainty from the Kings in this sort of deal, well, there’s value to that.
Young’s basketball fit in Sacramento is also iffy. He’s spent his entire Atlanta career throwing lobs to rim-running centers. He’d have to develop a whole new sort of pick-and-roll game to mesh with Sabonis. DeRozan is still in place as well. Neither he nor Young is a great 3-point shooter, though in fairness to Young, part of his low percentage is the degree of difficulty on the shots he takes. There isn’t quite as much overlap between the two as there is between Fox and DeRozan, but we just watched the Hawks try to get Young to play off of the ball more when they landed Murray. It didn’t work out. Could the Kings, with a stellar passer in Sabonis, turn Young into the off-ball weapon he’s capable of being? They’d need to because a defense featuring the two of them would struggle quite a bit.
This is an outline, not a complete blockbuster. At least as far as league-wide perception goes, the value drop-off from Fox to Young is meaningful. Sacramento would want more, likely at least one of San Antonio’s best youngsters. Stephon Castle is probably off of the table. Could they pry Jeremy Sochan away from the Spurs? He’d go a long way toward solving the defensive issues a Young-Sabonis pairing would create. Atlanta probably needs some player value here too. If nothing else, they do need some shot creation out of the guard spots. Tre Jones could be a decent stopgap point guard for them. They’d likely prefer Malik Monk’s shooting, but the Kings are giving up the best player in the deal already. They’re not going to be eager to sacrifice more off of their roster when their goal is to keep winning. The Spurs will pay quite a bit to get Fox, but they’ll have limits. After all, they can just sign Fox in 2026 free agency. They’re not going to pay a premium to ensure all parties are happy.
The finer points of the deal would need to be worked out in the next week, but the broad strokes make sense. If the Kings want win-now talent for Fox, the Hawks have one of the few available point guards who could match his production. The Spurs have the specific assets that Atlanta probably wants more than any others. And Fox could get his dream partnership with Wembanyama, setting San Antonio up for championship contention in the near future. There are questions for all three sides, and the Kings would need assurances that Young would extend, but these are three parties with the capacity to give one another what they want. That’s as good a starting point as any for a deal of this magnitude.
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