Information cutoff: 2026-07-18. Projection is the encyclopedia model, not copied consensus.
Role and baseline
- 2025-26: 15 games, 25.6 MPG across Atlanta and Washington. A right MCL sprain, quadriceps contusion/re-injury, knee management and low-back irritation limited him to 10 Hawks games and five Wizards games.
- Transaction/security: acquired January 9 and re-signed in July for four years and about $212 million. There is no role ambiguity when healthy.
- 2026-27 base role: starting point guard, primary pick-and-roll creator and highest-assist player; 32 of the team's exact 240 base minutes.
| GP | MPG | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55 | 32 | 2.8 | 22.4 | 3.1 | 10.1 | 1.0 | 0.2 | .438 | .875 | 4.2 |
Correction 2026-07-18: base GP lowered from 62 to 55. The injury ledger already stated that "a 15-game season demands a GP discount," and the projection did not apply one. Young played 15 games in 2025-26 — ten with Atlanta, five with Washington after a March 5 debut — by far the fewest of his career against a prior floor of 54, and Washington ruled him out indefinitely on March 21 with a recurrent right-quadriceps contusion and lower-back irritation. Both were treated conservatively rather than surgically, which means no procedure date anchors the recovery and his July press-conference claim that he is ready to play is a self-report, not a medical bulletin. 55 keeps him well clear of a shutdown assumption while pricing in a rebuilding team's willingness to rest a guard it has just paid.
Fantasy dossier
- 9-cat: projected top 25-35 per game. Assists, FT% volume and threes can anchor a build; FG%, turnovers and blocks are structural weaknesses.
- Points: top-25 rate upside because most formats reward points and assists while softening the turnover penalty.
- Dynasty: roughly top 35-45: still only 28, but small-guard defense, recent lower-body injuries and a developing supporting cast temper the peak-Atlanta valuation.
- Best pairing: efficient low-turnover wings/bigs and strong blocks. Davis and Sarr can cover defense, but neither fixes Young's missed-game risk.
Floor, median and ceiling
- Floor: another 45-55-game season, reduced scoring next to Dybantsa/Davis and top-60 totals value.
- Median: 62 games with approximately 22 points and 10 assists; an early-round category specialist.
- Ceiling: 70 healthy games, restored scoring efficiency and top-15 overall value.
Evidence trail
NBA multi-injury report · NBA re-signing report · official Hawks trade report · Wizards 2025-26 notes · July community 9-cat board
Career record
Pre-NBA: Oklahoma, one season (2017-18). He played 32 games for 27.4 points, 8.7 assists and 3.9 rebounds, becoming the only player in NCAA Division I history to lead the country in both points per game and assists per game in the same season (848 points, 271 assists, 48.6 percent assist rate). Consensus first-team All-American. College shooting splits are not verified here. Draft: 2018, first round, No. 5, Dallas Mavericks — traded on draft night to Atlanta with a protected future first-round pick for the rights to No. 3 pick Luka Dončić.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | 20 | ATL | 81 | 30.9 | 19.1 | 3.7 | 8.1 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 1.9 | .418 | .829 | 3.8 |
| 2019-20 | 21 | ATL | 60 | 35.3 | 29.6 | 4.3 | 9.3 | 1.1 | 0.1 | 3.4 | .437 | .860 | 4.8 |
| 2020-21 | 22 | ATL | 63 | 33.7 | 25.3 | 3.9 | 9.4 | 0.8 | 0.2 | 2.2 | .438 | .886 | 4.1 |
| 2021-22 | 23 | ATL | 76 | 34.9 | 28.4 | 3.7 | 9.7 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 3.1 | .460 | .904 | 4.0 |
| 2022-23 | 24 | ATL | 73 | 34.8 | 26.2 | 3.0 | 10.2 | 1.1 | 0.1 | 2.1 | .429 | .886 | 4.1 |
| 2023-24 | 25 | ATL | 54 | 36.0 | 25.7 | 2.8 | 10.8 | 1.3 | 0.2 | 3.2 | .430 | .855 | 4.4 |
| 2024-25 | 26 | ATL | 76 | 36.0 | 24.2 | 3.1 | 11.6 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 2.9 | .411 | .875 | 4.7 |
| 2025-26 | 27 | ATL/WAS | 15 | 25.6 | 17.9 | 2.0 | 8.0 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 1.8 | .458 | .825 | 2.6 |
| Career | 498 | 34.1 | 25.1 | 3.4 | 9.8 | 1.0 | 0.2 | 2.6 | .433 | .872 | 4.2 |
The 2025-26 row is a two-team total: ten games with Atlanta before the January 9, 2026 trade that sent him to Washington for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert, and five games with Washington after a March 5 debut, at 15.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 6.2 assists in restricted minutes. Treat the whole 2025-26 line as a small, minutes-capped, injury-contaminated sample rather than a true baseline; the 25.6 MPG and 2.6 turnovers are artifacts of load management, not a new profile.
Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks are not verifiable from a rater source here and are not estimated. The category shape has been consistent for seven years: elite assists, high free-throw volume at a strong percentage, plenty of threes and real points, offset by a field-goal percentage that has been a negative in every season except 2021-22 and by four-plus turnovers a night — the highest recurring turnover cost of any guard in this tier. That combination made him a reliable early-round per-game asset in his peak Atlanta years while keeping him out of the true top tier, and it makes him strictly a builder's piece: he requires a roster that punts nothing he supplies and covers field-goal percentage and blocks elsewhere. Points leagues have consistently rated him higher than category leagues, since points and assists both count fully and turnovers are typically a single small deduction. The 2025-26 season had no meaningful fantasy value at 15 games regardless of format.
Durability: GP by season: 81, 60, 63, 76, 73, 54, 76, 15. Two of those are partly contextual — the 2019-20 and 2020-21 team seasons ran 67 and 72 games — but the pattern of one compromised year every second or third season is real. The 2023-24 drop to 54 was a torn ligament in his left pinkie finger, repaired surgically on February 27, 2024, which cost 23 games. The 2025-26 season was effectively lost: a right MCL sprain suffered October 29, 2025 against Brooklyn cost 22-23 games through mid-December, the knee remained a management issue after his return, and following the trade he did not debut for Washington until March 5 before a quadriceps injury and low-back irritation ended his season with the team announcing he was out indefinitely and that neither injury required surgery. He is coming off a season in which he played 15 games and finished on the shelf; that is the dominant fact in any 2026-27 projection.
Trajectory: Young's leap came immediately — the jump from 19.1 to 29.6 points as a second-year player was a usage and green-light change on a team built entirely around him, and the scoring level he reached at 21 has never been exceeded since. What has actually improved over time is the passing: 8.1 assists to 11.6 across seven seasons, with the 2024-25 mark a career high at age 26, which reflects genuine growth in reading coverages rather than more minutes. Working against him, field-goal percentage has trended down for three straight healthy seasons (.429, .430, .411) as defenses have learned to live with the deep pull-up, and the turnover rate has climbed alongside the assists. He is 27 turning 28, which is nominally the middle of the prime, but a small guard whose game depends on change of direction coming off a knee sprain plus quad and back problems is not a normal aging-curve case. The four-year, $212 million commitment guarantees the role; nothing guarantees the games. The honest read for 2026-27 is that the per-game production should return close to his 2024-25 shape with somewhat lower scoring next to Washington's young creators, and that games played is the entire distribution.
Career sources: StatMuse season-by-season, StatMuse career averages, Wikipedia — Trae Young, NBA.com finger-surgery report, NBA.com return-from-finger-injury report, ESPN on the Wizards trade
Open questions
- Is Young fully cleared for camp, including the quadriceps and back issues?
- Does Dybantsa's shot creation lower Young's scoring while improving his efficiency?
- Will Washington rest Young on back-to-backs after committing long term?