Fans holding season tickets for the Wizards might need to exercise patience until 2027 to witness their newly acquired star in action.

Trae Young, recently traded from the Hawks in a surprising move, may sit out this season for Washington, as reported by The Athletic.

The 27-year-old guard has been sidelined for the majority of the season, participating in just 10 games for Atlanta due to injury, before being dealt to the struggling Washington team in exchange for two players.

According to one league insider, the Wizards are expected to take a very cautious approach with Young’s recovery, aiming to safeguard their top-eight protected 2026 first-round draft pick from the Knicks.

If Washington ends the season among the bottom eight teams, their obligation shifts to giving the Knicks two second-round picks instead.

“This is what life is like under our [draft] lottery system, with partially protected draft picks,” one NBA executive told ESPN. “You have one team (the Hawks) that doesn’t have its pick trading a player because they were losing too much when he was playing.

“And you have another team (the Wizards) who desperately needs to keep its pick who may find a reason not to play the same player because they might win too much if he plays.”

Young has been sidelined with a quad injury, which is usually not a season-ending ailment.

The Wizards, though, have little motivation to rush him back.

This trade was made with the future in mind, not the 2026 campaign.

The Wizards (10-26) have the NBA’s fourth-worst record and are only three games above the league’s bottom-dwellers in the Pacers.

They are four games worse than the Mavericks, whose 14-24 represents the ninth-worst mark in the league.

The prudent play for Washington is to get that top-eight pick, hope it gets some lottery luck, and then build a better roster for the 2027 season — even if the Knicks may disagree.

Beyond Young being sidelined, the Wizards sent away CJ McCollum and his team-high 18.8 points per game and Corey Kispert’s 9.2 points per game.

Losing 28 points per game while replacing that production with bench-warmers from one of the league’s worst lineups is not a strategy that screams winning basketball.