De'Andre Hunter trade grades: Who won the Cavaliers-Hawks deal?
The Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the best teams in the NBA and they somehow found a way to improve by getting De'Andre Hunter.
Cleveland managed to add a legitimate rotation player without giving up significant players or any valuable first-round picks. Even though Caris LeVert was playing fairly well for the Cavaliers off the bench, Hunter is both younger and better.
It is also worth mentioning that LeVert was in the final year of his contract, while Hunter is under team control for three more seasons. He also played alongside Cleveland's Ty Jerome while in college, where they won an NCAA national championship at Virginia.
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Trade details
Cavaliers get: De'Andre Hunter
Hawks get: Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, three second-round picks and two swaps
Cleveland Cavaliers
This was a fun move for Cleveland, who made a rare deal to improve their roster even though they have one of the best records in the NBA.
LeVert (who is a better defender) was providing genuine positive impact in their rotation so far this season, but Cleveland made an undoubtable improve in their roster with Hunter.
The wing, who was collegiate teammate with Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome and won a national championship together, is averaging his career-best 19.0 points per game while also shooting a personal-best 39.3 percent on 3-pointers.
This is not necessarily the trade that will win the Cavaliers a title, but it feels like they are at least slightly closer today than they were yesterday.
Grade: B+
Atlanta Hawks
After selecting De'Andre Hunter with the No. 4 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, he never actually quite materialized to what one would hope to see from a top-five selection.
But this is still not a great return for Hunter, especially if the Hawks decide not to re-sign LeVert when he becomes a free agent or if they make Niang a buyout candidate.
This is mostly a trade to gain more draft picks, one could imagine, but they didn't exactly get anything exciting in this package.
It was mostly just some second-round picks, and if that is all they could get for Hunter, maybe they would have wanted to wait until later to see if maybe he could have improved his value as the season continued.
This trade should allow their young core to get more minutes together, but it isn't much to write about at this point.
Grade: C-
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This article originally appeared on For The Win: De'Andre Hunter trade grades: Who won the Cavaliers-Hawks deal?
