It’s Perfectly Fine Not to Want to Trade for Jaylen Brown

The Atlanta Hawks don't have to go chasing for a star right now.

It’s going to be quite an interesting summer for the Atlanta Hawks. The first round of the 2026 NBA Draft will take place on Tuesday night, where, as it stands, the Hawks will make two selections at No. 8 and No. 23 if President of Basketball Operations Onsi Saleh elects to keep and use both first-round picks. Last summer, the New Orleans Pelicans came to Atlanta with a home-run trade offer that netted the Hawks this year’s Lottery selection at No. 8. The Hawks could go a lot of different ways with the No. 8 pick. They could even trade up. They can trade back. Who knows? Nobody saw a trade like the one with the Pelicans coming this time last year. It’s one of the many things that make this time of year so much fun in the NBA. Atlanta likes to maintain a level of optionality. One of those options is that they are a team that could trade for a player like Boston Celtics’ star wing Jaylen Brown.

But should they?

Reasonable minds can disagree on matters like whether the Hawks should be the potential third team in a deal that nets them the Atlanta native. Brown has been named an All-Star four seasons in a row. He is coming off a season in which he finished sixth in NBA MVP voting and was voted a second-team All-NBA player for the second time in his career. (Potentially relevant: The last two teams that have made it out of the East have been led by second-team All-NBA players in Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Haliburton.) He averaged 28.7 points per game, the highest of his professional career. He got to the line at the highest rate of his professional career at 7.5 attempts per game. He had the highest assist rate of his career. His 36.6 usage rate was in the 100th percentile across the League and the highest of his career. With Jayson Tatum out for most of the regular season, a lot was put on Brown’s plate, and he played at a level that kept Boston from sinking in the East like Indiana did this year without their injured star guard Haliburton.

That doesn’t mean the Hawks should give up assets to acquire Brown. Some teams make sense for Brown if the Celtics do ultimately decide to break up the Jays. The Milwaukee Bucks make more sense if they’d like to avert years and years of despair wandering the wilderness post-Giannis. Orlando makes sense as a team that’s desperate to break through. Miami makes sense for any star at any point. Los Angeles, too, for both the Clippers and the Lakers. What about Portland, Utah, and New Orleans? Those three seem eager to start winning a lot more right now. Brown, who will turn thirty in December, helps any of those teams win more right now.

Atlanta, though? Not so much. Atlanta is more on the Oklahoma City path. (Obviously not in the future-picks way, but, really, nobody else in the League compares to the Thunder in that department.) Johnson just made his first third-team All-NBA team. He broke through as a bona fide star for the Hawks. Onyeka Okongwu has proven to be a core piece at the five. Dyson Daniels has to figure it out to some degree with his perimeter shot, but he’s a winning player and does so many other things at an elite level. He’s a core piece on the wing, too. Nickeil Alexander-Walker just won Most Improved Player and, again, is a winning player who pairs well in the backcourt with a savvy veteran like CJ McCollum or whichever guard Saleh takes with the eighth pick in the draft on Tuesday night. The main core, though, Johnson, Okongwu, and Daniels, are 24, 25, and 23, respectively. Alexander-Walker is the oldest at 27.

With Shai Gilegous-Alexander, he was 26 when the Thunder won the NBA championship last season. Victor Wembanyama is 22 and propelled the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA Finals way ahead of schedule. (Dylan Harper burst onto the scene as his future co-star as a rookie, too, at 20.) There is a fine line between doing what the Thunder and the Spurs were able to do and what the Magic and Grizzlies have not. You need some luck, a lot of luck, really, but you also need patience.

Atlanta fans should continue to be patient. The team transformed into a beast in the East from the beginning of February onward. They beat the NBA world champions more times than anyone else this postseason. Their biggest challenge is the hardest thing in sports – going from good to great. There are always a lot of good teams in the League, but only a select handful, if that, of truly great teams. But they can get there without acquiring a star player like Brown. They can add the best player available at No. 8 on their board Tuesday night. They could always run to pick up the phone if and when New Orleans calls. They could do a lot of things on Tuesday night and the rest of this summer that would continue to push them towards becoming a truly great team.

Atlanta can get to where they want to go without going Star Chasing. They have one on the roster, and they could take another one at No. 8. Or they could trade up. Or they could trade back. They, like the Thunder and the Spurs, could follow lots of different paths that could ultimately build a team that pushes for 50-plus wins routinely if they land the plane correctly. When you add a star like Brown, the timeline would change drastically for the Hawks. Saleh does not have to do that, though, like the Magic might want to. Or the Heat. Or even the Pistons, who just won sixty games and didn’t reach the Eastern Conference Finals.

The Hawks are in a good spot with their current timeline and their current core. There has never been a better time to be young and talented in the NBA. Just look at the Spurs. Last year, the Thunder won a title with their three best players being 26, 23, and 24. Johnson will turn 25 next season. The Hawks are in a great spot with their own star and their own core pieces. For Atlanta, nailing their Lottery pick on Tuesday night is the play, not adding a player like Brown, as great a player as he is. That’s a play for Detroit, or Orlando, or Los Angeles, or several other previously mentioned teams across the association.

The Atlanta Hawks & The NBA Finals Fallout

The play is to stay the course, stay flexible, keep your young core together, keep the helpful veterans like CJ McCollum and Jock Londale, and see where next season takes you. See where Year 2 of third-team All-NBA player Johnson takes you. Could he transform into a second-team All-NBA player next year or the year after? See where Zaccharie Risacher and Asa Newell take you in Year 3 and Year 2 of their young careers, respectively. Could the No. 8 pick be as immediate an impact as a Kon Knueppel, Stephon Castle, Cedric Coward, Keyonte George, et cetera, et cetera? Atlanta has lots of options right now, but if they were to add Brown, those options would drastically dwindle. That’s an all-in addition, but the Hawks aren’t quite there yet, and that’s OK, too.