Dejounte is gone. Is Trae next?
Regardless, the Atlanta Hawks must be feeling a lot better today because they finally ripped the Band-Aid off. One of Dejounte Murray or Trae Young was supposed to go… at least. Today, the answer was Murray, whom the team sent to New Orleans for Dyson Daniels, Larry Nance Jr., EJ Liddell and two first-round picks, league sources confirmed Friday.
Somehow, it appears the Hawks were able to recoup about 97 cents on the dollar from the reckless trade that brought Murray to Atlanta in the first place, a trade that plunged them into a crisis of relentless mediocrity but unable to tank.
For a front office that went an entire year without making a single transaction more significant than promoting Trent Forrest in a two-way deal, it’s a remarkable and disconcerting achievement.
Let’s compare the two. Murray’s initial trade sent three first-round picks, two of them unprotected, and a pick swap to San Antonio; on Friday, the Hawks received two first-round picks and a former lottery pick in Daniels. Veteran Nance is part of the deal as a salary match.
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Recall, however, that one of those firsts initially sent to San Antonio — a lottery-protected first from Charlotte — has yet to be conveyed and appears increasingly likely to turn into two second-round picks in 2026 and 2027. (That would happen if the Hornets miss the playoffs this year, as most expect.)
The Hawks won’t have their own picks in 2025 and 2027 and owe the Spurs a trade in 2026, when the Victor Wembanyama-led San Antonio team should be powerful. Not great, Bob. We’ll come back to this part in a minute.
On the other hand, Atlanta just picked up an unprotected pick from the Lakers in the 2025 draft that has a very high chance of landing in the teens. The Hawks also received an unprotected pick in 2027, although it was less than New Orleans or Milwaukee.
The other gem, however, is Daniels, a budding defensive specialist who joins a team whose tragic inability to contain the ball resulted in the league’s 27th-ranked defense a season ago.
Daniels has two years remaining on a rookie contract that will pay him $6.1 million this year and $7.7 million next year. He struggled shooting and didn’t really fit in in New Orleans as they had a lot of other suspect shooters, but in Atlanta he becomes a vital piece that could start to counterbalance the famous matador Young.
The timing of this trade also allows the Hawks to recycle John Collins’ $23 million exception for another year; it will now be the “Murray exception”, worth $18.2 million until June 28 or 29. The Atlanta faithful will never again need to say the name “John Collins” every time they propose a trade. (I should note: $6 million will remain on the Collins exception until July 8 if the Hawks prove frisky in the trade machine.)
Atlanta can also hang another “luxury tax avoided” banner in the rafters of State Farm Arena, dropping $6.3 million below the line after their lottery triumph briefly put them above it. The Hawks have 14 players under contract, but adding Nance would seem to make Bruno Fernando’s $2.7 million non-guaranteed deal fungible; the deadline for his guarantee is Saturday, so we’ll know soon.
I joke about luxury tax avoidance, but the extra financial wiggle room opens up other possibilities for Atlanta. Signing Vit Krejčí to a contract seems like a foregone conclusion, but the Hawks could also consider a small deal for free agent forward Saddiq Bey. He has a torn ACL and will likely miss most or all of this season, but the Hawks would retain his Bird rights until next summer if he remains under contract in 2024-25.
Most notably, Atlanta can now use its non-taxpayer mid-level exception to pursue other talent. In particular, the backcourt could use another shot creator for non-Young minutes.
Even without any other moves, the Hawks have quickly transformed into a younger team. Daniels, No. 1 overall pick Zaccharie Risacher, 2023 first-round pick Kobe Bufkin and 2022 first-round pick Jalen Johnson — quietly among the league’s most improved players last season — now appear to be centerpieces.
Of course, I say all this as if the Hawks are done with trades. Really ? The rumors surrounding Clint Capela and De’Andre Hunter have been circulating for ages, but the general consensus from league sources is that the Hawks can’t get a meaningful return for them.
And finally, there’s the elephant in the room. No discussion of Atlanta’s predicament is complete without bringing up the nuclear option: trading Young to San Antonio and getting those picks back, which would allow Atlanta to move forward with a sincere reset of the tanking around Risacher, Johnson and Daniels.
San Antonio is the only plausible trade partner for such a move, given that the Spurs currently own three consecutive Hawks drafts. Ideally, San Antonio also desperately needs an elite point guard and could easily package non-essential salaries (Devonte’ Graham, Zach Collins and Tre Jones) to match Young’s $43 million salary. The fact that the Spurs just pushed Graham’s guarantee date back to July 8 is at least sobering.
Pivoting to tank by trading Young to any other team is much more difficult. Theoretically, Atlanta could also do “The Brooklyn Special” by trading the picks they just received in the Murray trade to San Antonio to get their own picks back, but the Spurs would likely demand a premium beyond that in the first additional ones. So unless the deals for Young are in Mikal Bridges territory — think top four or five — dealing Young elsewhere probably isn’t a good move for Atlanta.
So once again it’s undeniably Trae Young’s team…for now.
This time, at least, the pieces fit together better. Let’s pause to quickly salute Murray, who played (and played well) through various injuries during the second half of last season, even though his name was in trade rumors and he knew he would be probably gone during the summer. But he and Young had no chemistry together, and asking Murray to defend from 2-point range took away one of his old strengths.
Existential questions remain about whether this team can actually accomplish anything other than “first-round cannon fodder” — Atlanta’s record over the last four seasons is an offensive 161-157. Fittingly, they got the first pick in the draft in a year where most viewed the first pick as a useful secondary weapon but not a superstar. Let’s go for the play-ins!
Still, Friday was the best day for the reconstituted Landry Fields management since its inception. By getting rid of Murray, the Hawks regained the flexibility to move in a number of directions with or without Young. (Don’t overlook the fact that they’ve now escaped the Stepien Rule, for example, by trading their own first-rounder in 2026 or 2028.)
In doing so, they ended up with a younger, cheaper, more consistent squad that was better suited to their best player. It’s just unclear how long that last point will hold.
(Top photo of Trae Young and Dejounte Murray: Kevin Jairaj/USA Today)