The temperature on the De’Andre Hunter trade — the first one — has swung wildly over the last year.Â
From good to bad to good again, the trade has run the gamut. And now, as the Cleveland Cavaliers pull off win after win with contributions from a couple of newcomers, the Hunter trades look better than ever.
The Cleveland Cavaliers were initially praised for eschewing mere financial savings and trading for a good player to bolster their playoff push last year. They would ultimately finish with 64 wins and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference with a bullet. Adding a player with forward size, defensive tools and a willingness to shoot at high volume seemed like a no-brainer.
The De'Andre Hunter trade looked like a failure
After a brief hot start where Hunter hit every shot for a handful of games, things went downhill fast. Hunter battled injuries and outright ineffectiveness once the playoffs began. He was a massive negative for a Cavaliers team that lost players elsewhere in the lineup and needed a healthy, shot-making Hunter. They got nothing close to that.
It wasn’t much better to start this season. Hunter was a lead weight on whatever lineups he was in, and he was soon passed by second-year wing Jaylon Tyson. As the Cavs stumbled overall to a shaky start, all under the weight of the second apron, their decision to take on Hunter’s contract went from brave to foolhardy.Â
The other guillotine looming over them from the Hunter trades was the cost in draft capital. Trading a first-round swap didn’t seem like a big deal given that the Cavaliers thought they would once again have the best record in the Eastern Conference; their stumble, however, meant that the swap would be triggered and the Cavs would end up with the San Antonio Spurs’ pick, on track to be at the bottom of the first round.
It culminated in a trade deadline deal that sent Hunter and a second-round pick to the Sacramento Kings for Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis, a relative coup that made it clear the Kings valued Hunter positively as a player and asset. That is a bizarre stance for a team entering a multi-year tank to hold, but it worked out for the Cavaliers.
The second Hunter trade has saved the first
Hunter is now out for the season after undergoing eye surgery, but the Cavaliers haven’t looked back. They are 15-4 in their last 19 games, rising into the top four in the East and putting them in position to make the postseason run they wished to make all along.
That success has been driven by a number of players, of course, but one of the key additions has been Keon Ellis. The former Kings wing saw his role marginalized in Sacramento, but the Cavaliers are deploying him as a defensive monster to great effect.Â
Since joining the Cavs a month ago, Keon Ellis has racked up 19 steals and 15 blocks in his 11 games. He leads the team in both steal percentage and block percentage for the season now, ahead of even Evan Mobley in the latter category. He has been everywhere, and all at a mere $2.3 million.
The other looming disaster from the original De'Andre Hunter trade was that the throwaway first-round draft pick swap that the Cavaliers traded to the Atlanta Hawks looked poised to knock them down the draft order. When Cleveland was floundering near the middle of the pack, that drop was a full ten picks or so, both a more painful slide and a more damaging one given that the Cavs looked like they desperately needed an infusion of young, inexpensive talent.
The pain of the Hunter trade has lessened
As Cleveland has righted the ship, so has the bite of that pick swap lessened. The Hawks are flipping picks with the San Antonio Spurs and then have the ability to trade that with the Cavaliers. The Spurs have the league's second-best record as they live out the dream season the Cavs had a season ago.
Even so, the Cavaliers have risen up the standings and would be falling from pick No. 23 down to 29, and they are just two games away from giving up only the 26th or 27th pick in such a swap. With an easy schedule down the stretch, the difference may be rather muted after all.
Did the Cavaliers win the original De'Andre Hunter trade? Perhaps not, given that they paid a very real cost and he was a no-show in the playoffs. But their midseason pivot this year yielded them a defensive stud on the wing in Keon Ellis who looks like exactly what they need.
It took some time, but they have come out of the De'Andre Hunter experience as winners. Each and every day, their winnings increase just a little bit more.