2025-26 Stats: 8.1 PTS, 1.0 REB, 1.2 AST, 0.5 STL
2025-26 Salary: $3.7 million
Pure shooting guards don’t hold as much appeal these days. Gary Trent Jr.’s value is also severely complicated by a down-bad 2025-26 campaign.
At the same time, the degree to which he’s a one-position player gets overstated. He can—and is—deployed as a wing more often than players like Anfernee Simons or even Bennedict Mathurin.
Granted, most of Trent’s defensive value is rooted in creating chaos away from the ball. He didn’t do that nearly as well last year, and his approach is high-risk, high-reward even when it’s working.
It still makes sense to bet on a 27-year-old’s longer-standing track record. Before last season, the best version of Trent saw him down a ton of threes and break up possessions at the less glamorous end.
Over the past five years, in fact, he has rated in the 70th percentile or better of passing lane defense and catch-and-shoot three-point shot-making while logging more than 1,500 minutes four times, according to BBall Index. The only other players who can say the same: OG Anunoby, Mike Conley, Nikola Jokić, Donovan Mitchell, Donte DiVincenzo and Fred VanVleet.