Trae Young, who already felt he would be traded before the season started: Atlanta will always be my second home.

In a recent podcast interview, NBA star Trae Young said that he already felt he would be traded to another team before the start of the 2025/26 season, but also emphasized that he will always consider Atlanta his second home.

Trae Young, 27, was traded from the Atlanta Hawks to the Washington Wizards in January of this year, much to the surprise of fans.

During his time with the Atlanta Hawks, Trae Young played 493 regular season games in the NBA, averaging 25.2 points per game with a field goal percentage of 43.2% and a three-point percentage of approximately 35.2%.

In an interview, Trae Young said, "I knew that if I didn't perform well at the start of the season, that trade would happen sooner or later. Then I got injured when a teammate bumped into me. And when the schedule was announced last summer, I was already thinking that the start of the season would be very difficult, and if Porzingis and I didn't perform well at the start, they would trade us and start rebuilding."

"So when I got injured, I roughly knew what was going to happen, and I could feel the change in the atmosphere within the team. I've been there for seven and a half years, this is my eighth season, and I've never felt like this before, so I knew it was going to happen sooner or later."

In addition, Trae Young said, "My agent and general manager were already in communication, so I just wanted to leave in the right way. I didn't want a public falling out, and I didn't want people to think I hated Atlanta, because I will never hate Atlanta. Atlanta will always be my second home, so I just wanted to leave in a dignified manner."

"What really surprised me was that when the news broke that the Washington Wizards might be my next team, I wanted to publicly express my desire to go there. It wasn't that they just randomly sent me to the Washington Wizards, because that's not the case at all, and that's what shocked me the most. We worked together to send me to where I wanted to go."

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