Trae Young is up there as one of the most polarizing stars in the league, and some more daring critics would go even so far to deny he’s a star at all. Still, you can’t ignore a player who’s been an absolute offensive juggernaut and a stellar playmaker in nearly every season of his career. <\/p>\n
Regardless, the common criticisms of Trae Young’s game include his perceived lackadaisical effort on defense, a tendency to chase stat-padding rather than focusing on the best shot available, and I\u2019d bet that a few folks point to his bold personality and villainous persona \u2014 especially as it became well-known duing the Hawks-Knicks playoff rivalry \u2014 as reasons not to like the man known as “Ice Trae.”<\/p>\n
There’s a reason why a player like Trae Young is in a different conversation than someone like Cam Thomas<\/a> or Tyler Herro. Say what you will about his flaws, but Young is undeniably among the top-tier, elite playmakers, if not, the absolute best. Over the past three seasons, he has averaged double-digit assists: 10.2 in 2022-23, 10.8 in 2023-24, and 11.6 in 2024-25. In fact, Young’s most recent campaign saw him lead the league in assists, finally claiming the top spot after coming close in previous seasons.<\/p>\n I recently highlighted how a superb playmaker like Trae Young could be the key to unlocking the Raptors’ potential, similar to how the Indiana Pacers built a successful run to the NBA Finals<\/a> with Tyrese Haliburton leading the way. And it looks like I\u2019m not the only one pondering the idea of attaching Young to this talented Raptors core, as Sam Vecenie of The Game Theory Podcast floated a hypothetical scenario of a Trae Young-Raptors trade in his recent livestream from August 21<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trae Young on the Raptors is a very intriguing trade pitch<\/p>\n “… Jake Fischer just reported that Toronto is going to be very heavily involved in the trade picture all year, right? So, you’re telling me that you could do something like, you know, Trae Young for Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, and a bunch of picks? Like, I’m literally just spitballing, right? Like, I’m not saying that that’s even a good deal. But, you know, I would want probably other things if I’m Atlanta and not just those two, but like I don’t know.”<\/p>\n Sam Vecenie, Aug 21, 2025<\/p>\n Like Vecenie mentioned, he’s just spitballing, but there’s definitely room for the Raptors to explore the possibility of interest in Trae Young. I’ve already pointed out that the Raptors badly need an uptick in Immanuel Quickley’s playmaking<\/a> to take another step forward. It’s clear that playmaking isn\u2019t the defining element of Quickley’s game the way it is for someone like Trae Young. <\/p>\n Just thinking about the pick-and-rolls and lobs Trae Young could create for his teammates \u2014 making guys like Scottie Barnes, Jakob Poeltl, and even some of the youngsters like Collin Murray-Boyles and Ja’Kobe Walter<\/a> look even more like studs than the Raptors already know them as.<\/p>\n Toronto has already signaled its eagerness to make a win-now move by acquiring Brandon Ingram. A player like Trae Young could potentially be part two of that same hopeful winning strategy, but there are many hurdles Toronto needs to clear before those trade conversations can even take shape. Meanwhile, Atlanta seems focused <\/a>on salvaging what they can to maximize a Trae Young-led core. <\/p>\n For now, this trade idea remains just something for us to consider. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trae Young is up there as one of the most polarizing stars in the league, and some more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-92642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}