Trae Young has spent his professional career working within the unenviable anonymity of Atlanta Hawks basketball, known mostly for a high usage rate that has not necessarily corresponded to team success. Young made the career mistake of helping his team make a conference final in Year Three and then doing nothing of note since, which along with the arrival of younger and more cost- and basketball-efficient teammates made a trade piece in Year Seven. Worse, he got traded to a team with a much worse past, present, and future than the Hawks—the Washington Wizards. Typically, this is just eight-figure exile, a way to earn your $48 million without the stress of competitive expectations before entering the free agent market in hopes of a well-paying gig in the actual NBA.
Young, though, has revealed himself to be an inspired strategic thinker during his Wizards stint despite that stint not having officially begun. He has not played a minute for the team since the trade because of a balky knee, but is expected to make his debut Thursday night at home against Utah, or as we know them, the Mountain Time Zone Washington Wizards. So how could Young make a splash in advance and churn a bit of local buzz for this most customer-resistible of the Tankin’ Ten?
Easy. Simply get thrown out of a game while still in his civilian clothes. Viral marketing has never been so whimsical.
On Monday, the Wizards were in the midst of their standard double-digit hiding, this time at the hands of the Houston Rockets. It was late in the third quarter when Houston’s Tari Eason and Washington’s Jamir Watkins got snippy with each other, and Young walked onto the court to bark about the snippage. He took a quick technical foul for that from official Jacyn Goble, and moments later absorbed a second, making Young that rarest of players—one who has been thrown out of a game for his team before actually appearing in a game for said team. Hey, you try it if you think it’s so easy.
Now we’re not suggesting contrivance here; Young could have done it early in the first quarter and been out on the town before half. Nor are we suggesting an act of poor taste, either; Young may have his own feelings about being tasked to reconstruct this monument to inertia, but if he didn’t care he wouldn’t have been so energetic in defending a future teammate.
But the Wizards have been among the blandest and most forgettable teams in the NBA for years now, to the point where they average 4,100 empty seats per night, and that’s using their numbers. Last night they counted 17,352 in attendance, a good 1,500 more than their seasonal average; that number was largely there to see hometown hero Kevin Durant kick their collective seater, and it’s hard to imagine a similarly sized crowd for the Jazz even though this is by far Washington’s most winnable remaining home game. There are therefore few opportunities for Young to make his bones in his new town, and he seized the opportunity without ever having to pull on his shooting sleeve. Or maybe the opportunity seized him, and he was overcome with both ire and good fortune simultaneously.
The Wizards have long needed a team that could graft itself to the town; the all-too-brief John Wall-Bradley Beal era ended in misery, injury and losses, and the long-gone Gilbert Arenassaince feels like a hallucination. Indeed, while this years’ Wiz are in yet another tankapalooza, they were active acquiring names at the trade deadline, grabbing Young from a cold market and Anthony Davis from a sub-zero one. It may be false hustle, but it’s less overtly screw-it and notably more farsighted than the vibe the Wizards typically emit. There’s a reason the team hasn’t routinely sold out its arena since the early ‘Oughts, and even attendance figures can be fudged only so much. In that way Young is just competing in his own way for the shrinking entertainment dollar, and credit to him for seizing and then promoting the moment.
And Young’s ejection may have inspired his new playmates, as the Wiz outscored the blatantly superior Rockets 45-33 from that point to the end of the game. Washington is among the least disputatious teams in the league, with only two more team techs than Dillon Brooks has managed on his own, and so a cranky Young might at least serve to make the Wizards less tepid. Making them better is, well, let’s not get ahead of either ourselves or history. But Young seems at least pot-committed to making it look good, which is more than can be said for his new team.
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