7 NBA dream trade deadline targets (and what they'd cost)

4) Trae Young

Although the Atlanta Hawks have seemingly made it clear that they don't plan to move star Trae Young, if they did, he would net them a fortune in return assets. Young is averaging more than 27 points per game this season and averaging more than 10 assists a night for the second consecutive. Players like him are hard to come by and he is just 25 years old and under contract for two more guaranteed seasons.

Thus far, Atlanta appears willing to trade almost everyone else on their roster in order to retool around Young but that will be hard to do since they don't have control of their first-round picks from 2025–2027. That takes tanking off the table and Atlanta has never been known as a free-agent destination or a place where the game's top players demand to be traded too.

With tanking off the table and free agency an unlikely means to dramatically improve, the Hawks could come to the conclusion that trading Young is the best way for them to get out of the mess they're in.

Were that the case, he could reasonably fetch four first-round picks, helping them replace the three they gave up in the Dejounte Murray trade. They still wouldn't be able to tank, but if they traded him, Murray, and players such as Bojan Bogdanovic and Clint Capella, then they would have plenty of picks to rebuild through the draft.