The Most Valuable Player trophy is handed out every year, and unless the Hawks rocket up the standings this year, there’s little chance that a Hawk will stake claim to that award this season. Trae Young, since being drafted in 2018, has yet to even receive a top five vote for MVP.

Still, there’s an argument to be made that Trae Young is the most indispensable player in the league. No team is so singularly dependent on one player to burden the bulk of the offense outside of the obvious all-world players like Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

It’s easy to see why Trae Young continues to angle for a serious contract extension from the Hawks. He has posted at least 24 points and nine assists per game every season since his second year in the league. No one would argue that he isn’t one of the biggest drivers of offense in the league between his playmaking for himself and others, but it’s also the pure workload that it hard to truly contextualize with conventional stats.

It’s easy to forget how extremely involved in the offense Young continues to be. He made the second-most drives after Gilgeous-Alexander, received the most passes by a large margin (and was top three in passes made), created the most potential assists, and created the most points off assists during the 2024-25 season.

With that backdrop, there is one key piece of business that is now a major talking point around the league. Young has just one guaranteed season left on his contract worth around $46 million – with a player option for 2026-27 for almost $49 million that he’s unlikely to pick up as he seeks a longer-term deal.

De’Aaron Fox of the San Antonio Spurs — a player often compared to Young — recently agreed to a not so popular maximum value deal that should come in at around $229 million over four seasons. However, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN, that kind of similar announcement for Young reportedly just isn’t in the cards:

There seems to be some frustration mounting in regard to this situation. Young recently replied to Micah Parsons in a cross-sports negotiating solidarity moment, tweeting/xeeting:

Then, senior ESPN writer Marc J. Spears had this to say about the situation on a recent episode of NBA Today:

“Trae has done a lot to show that he’s invested in the Hawks. Nickeil Alexander-Walker, (Luke) Kennard, he convinced them to sign with the Hawks. Instead of going to the Jordan (Brand event in Greece) this summer, he came to Summer League and he got to meet with (new senior VP of basketball operations) Bryson Graham. […] What I’m hearing now at this point – and you can tell by Trae’s tweet, and I saw him during the Finals – I think he’s disappointed that it hasn’t come, it hasn’t been offered. So don’t be surprised if he plays this out and sees what happens next summer.”

Despite this media consternation, I’m here to say, ‘take several deep breaths.’ There is little reason to be hung up on the contractual future of Young at this point in time. If it were late June 2026, I might be playing a different tune, but in an offseason of renewed good vibes, don’t spend your energy harshing those same vibes.

Here are five reasons why it’s way too early to have heartburn over the future of Young in Atlanta:

The Hawks and Young can work out an extension at any time during the season

This situation is unlike the Dyson Daniels extension talks where, by virtue of him entering his fourth NBA season as a former first-round draftee, if the sides don’t reach an agreement by October, then talks have to be tabled until next offseason. In contrast, the Hawks and their star player can continue to have dialogue over his contract throughout the season.

Trae Young does hold a bit of leverage in terms of being able to pick up or decline his player option at any point, but I would imagine he wants to make basketball the central focus once the games get underway.

Trae Young is an ultimate professional

While it would be ideal to resolve this matter as soon as possible, it’s not as if there is a risk of a holdout involving Young’s services to the team. He is still under contract for this season, and there’s no reason to think that he’ll bring any kind of theatrics to the locker room out of frustration.

Despite an official listing of Achilles tendinitis for the majority of last season, Young suited up for 76 regular season games plus the two Play-In Tournament games. He rarely has an issue with being available for the Hawks regardless of whatever firestorm is happening off the court or in the front office. Young will continue to bring his lunchpail to work and give Atlanta the production we’re accustomed to seeing.

The Hawks are right to see Young as less than a max player and hold their ground

The team has made their stance obvious at this point: they don’t see him as a no-brainer full maximum salary player, especially once you consider that this deal would take him well into his 30s as an undersized guard.

Young’s shooting efficiency has yet to rebound to the heights he hit in his 2021-22 season when he triple slashed 46/38/90 (field goal percentage/three-point percentage/free throw percentage) – good for a 60% true shooting percentage, then seven percentage points greater than league average. In the three seasons since, he has yet to approach that superstar-level scoring punch – with a particular worry about his rapidly declining ability to score in the paint.

He’s a player you have to build a team around in a specific way around his ball-dominance on offense and him being an easy target on defense. And while this upcoming team may be the best Atlanta iteration of that particular build, maybe it would be an easier roster build to have a more malleable, if less dynamic, facsimile in his place.

Winning cures all, and this team is built to win now

Even if this turns out to be an ‘audition’ season for the franchise to prove to Young that they’re building something exciting, you couldn’t have asked for a better offseason towards that end. A lot has been written about how exceptional the offseason has been.

Trae Young – just like the fans – has a right to be frustrated with the metaphorical car stuck in neutral for this organization over the past four seasons. If the Hawks can soon break through and push for contention, maybe Young can weigh maximizing his earnings differently versus being able to win in the only place he’s known home since being drafted.

There are ways to move on gracefully — should it get to that point

This recently restructured front office, led by general manager Onsi Saleh, has already proven to move in shrewd manner. The brass has used mechanisms like the traded player exception (TPE) and the non-taxpayer midlevel exception (MLE) just this offseason to add talent to the roster, so should things turn south in this relationship, I have confidence that they’ll know how to pivot as best as possible. Instead of letting Trae Young walk in free agency with no return, one can imagine sign-and-trade scenarios can come into play, for example.

The core of the Hawks still has young talent aplenty, and that situation may entice an available offensive engine to come and run the show in the wake of Young leaving. It would be by no means an ideal result for this to be Young’s last season in a Hawks jersey, but there seems to be a clear succession plan around Dyson Daniels, Jalen Johnson, and others here. And who knows? Maybe that 2026 Pelicans-Bucks “superpick” brings in a replacement franchise pillar at just the right time.