End of an era: Reflecting on Trae Young’s time with the Hawks after his trade to Washington

If there’s one thing that’s constant in life, it’s that everything changes all the time.

A lot of people don’t like change at any level and vehemently resist it. I for one have come to accept it as a fact of life, but that doesn’t make it any less hard.

The Atlanta Hawks have undergone a massive shift as of Wednesday night, though technically the trade isn’t “official” yet (at the time of writing). Trae Young will be going to Washington for C.J. McCollum and Corey Kispert.

I don’t necessarily want to get into whether or not I agree with the trade or what people generally think about Trae (I don’t), but rather what it means for me on a personal level.

I’m 25 years old, two years younger than Trae. The year he was drafted (2018) was the year that I graduated high school and left home for college.

Trae was 19 leaving Oklahoma to come be the face of the Hawks under immense scrutiny because of the draft-night trade that sent Luka Doncic to Dallas.

I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan of the deal at the time, though I certainly wasn’t on the hate train ready to burn the franchise down like some were.

But it grew on me.

His passing was exciting to watch and made Dewayne Dedmon look like a passable NBA center (same with Alex Len post-Dedmon). He was a great fit with John Collins who could absolutely jump through the roof, and those lobs fed me for years.

His second year he made the All-Star team and officially broke out as a star in the league, and by his fourth year he led us on the most exciting playoff run since I’ve been a fan (I just missed the 60-win team in 2014-15).

A first round series that still lives in Knicks’ fans heads after Trae’s game-winner in Game 1. He put up 18 assists in Game 4 of the second round to keep Atlanta alive against the 76ers before the Kevin Huerter game in Game 7.

The Eastern Conference Finals didn’t go as well after Trae’s injury, but depending on who you ask the Hawks would have been in the finals if he didn’t go down.

My memory is really terrible, but I still remember working closing shift at a retail job during this time. Overall life wasn’t great for me at this point, but this gave me some life. I turned notifications off on my phone, recorded the games and watched it at home late into the night for every single game of that playoff run.

All without Trae being an All-Star, mind you. The constant disrespect he faced while in Atlanta will hopefully change in Washington, but he finally got some the next year with an All-NBA 3rd Team selection.

The kind of cultural star Trae was is something the Hawks hadn’t had since Dominique Wilkins. Whether or not you think Trae is better than ‘Nique or not, he’s absolutely on the Mount Rushmore of best players in franchise history.

At the time I thought the 2021 ECF run was the start of a run, not the peak of the Trae Young era. For the next two years the Hawks took a step back, losing in the first round, before missing the playoffs outright in 2023 and it’s been that way since.

Part of that is the organizational failure of building around Trae. Cam Reddish and De’Andre Hunter didn’t pan out and Atlanta was counting on them to be the stars next to him. And that 2021 run was on borrowed time from the start with Danilo Gallinari, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Clint Capela all getting up there.

Not to mention the 2022 and 2023 first-round picks were just flat terrible. A.J. Griffin had a great rookie year before leaving the league entirely and Kobe Bufkin never really played with his injuries. He was traded for cash considerations in September and was later waived.

The Dejounte Murray trade was also a disaster, though I did like the idea of it at the time.

But many people choose to blame Trae’s size and defense, which were completely overblown when you look at similar guards and how (relatively) well he played on that end in the postseason.

There were a lot of uneducated takes rolling around about how the Hawks were better without Trae this season without paying attention to any of the nuance.

Regardless of all that the writing was on the wall when he and Atlanta didn’t agree to an extension in the offseason. With his injuries he’s not the same athlete he was and he never got the chance to get chemistry with this new team, and now he’s gone.

This has been a really long-winded way of saying I’m hurt that Trae is leaving in the way that many sports fans will understand. In a parasocial way he and I grew up together.

I’m no longer that dumb, lonely 18-year-old who dove headfirst into basketball as a refuge from the real world. I’m about to exit my mid-20s as a married man in a career I enjoy, something I could only dream of eight years ago.

In a way, Trae being traded to Washington signifies the end of my young adulthood. Remembering his time with Atlanta will bring nostalgia not just because they were some of the best years of my fandom, but because it coincided with my youth.

Life constantly changes and throws new and sometimes difficult things at you. Sure, there’s plenty to be excited about when it comes to the future of Atlanta, but things won’t quite be the same without Trae Young.