Steph is an average defender. Trae Young is horrifically bad at defense. He has an undeniably high offensive ceiling but his defense is so bad that it’s hard to see him ever being a top tier player.
Also, Luka already is one of the best offensive players ever and has a lot of potential to improve as a shooter.
I didn’t say that the Stephquity = 1, but yes, I’m well aware that Trae is a very bad defender.
And since I was talking explicitly about offense, you must agree if you think Luka’s one of the best offensive players ever, and Trae’s scoring and passing numbers were virtually identical to his last year, with slightly higher turnovers but slightly higher efficiency. Luka’s a couple of months younger, and maybe he can get to where Trae is as a shooter, which would put him very high on the offensive GOAT hierarchy, but Trae can improve too.
Edit- now that I’m looking at the stats, I might not have even given Trae enough credit. I don’t think there much of stat-based argument that he was worse than Luka last year on offense. In addition to the nearly identical rate stats for scoring and passing, his ORPM was significantly higher- 7.14 (second overall behind Giannis and ahead of Harden) vs Luka’s 4.88. He’ll be an interesting case study for the “offense > defense” and “PG defense doesn’t matter that much” people. Celtics made it work with IT, but it takes some conscious effort.