It’s almost hard to believe that it has been a year since the Cleveland Cavaliers acquired De’Andre Hunter from the Atlanta Hawks. With the trade, it felt like the Cavaliers found their final piece of the puzzle. In what was already a historic season, they were pushing all their chips in and finally found the right player to play alongside the core four.
Now, here Cavs’ fans were in early 2026, spending a lot of their free time thinking of ways to ship Hunter out of town. No matter who the Cavaliers were getting in return, it felt like it was almost necessary to send Hunter away.
On paper, De’Andre Hunter was a perfect fit alongside the core four for the Cavaliers. Long since the construction of Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen, the front office has been searching for that one player that was the “missing piece”. Someone who stretches the floor while showing a switchability between defending the two through four. By all accounts, that was exactly what Hunter would bring to the table.
Metrics alongside the core four would prove how Hunter fit well in the limited time they shared the floor, which was less time than what Marty Supreme runs for (~90 mins). Now, that is not Hunter’s fault, as he could make the case for being the healthiest of the five during his tenure in Cleveland. However, Hunter almost needed all of the core four to be on the floor to maximize his value for the Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers are always at their best with the core four on the court. When it’s an amalgamation of pieces, and Hunter is asked to take over stretches of games is where it starts to fall apart.
Hunter, by all accounts, is a self-creator, which is what the Cavaliers lack at this current iteration of their roster. However, Hunter’s warts would start to show when he is asked to do more. Tendencies of magnet ball are a common theme, and that did not really gel with the Cavaliers’ offensive scheme. It was commonplace for a possession to feel like it was hijacked by an ill-advised shot from Hunter, whether it’s pulled up from the perimeter or a midrange jumper.
Last season, those ill-advised attempts were buoyed by his shooting splits (42% from three, 48% from the field). Now, the same poor choices were compounded by poor shooting splits (30% from three, 42% from the field). In addition to those splits, the rebounding was a major issue. Hunter’s play could be described with any words synonymous with a lack of effort for long stretches.
Hunter would often show little defensive resilience and would get boxed out and punished on the glass as if he were someone four inches shorter. It just felt like in Hunter’s second year in Cleveland, started on the wrong foot, and it became a waiting game for a return to form. It never came to be.
The Hunter exit became easier to stomach, with the rise of Jaylon Tyson. Tyson’s effort, shooting splits, and rebounding capabilities made it so Hunter is more expendable. Tyson has shown to be a player capable of morphing roles depending whose available on the given night.
Hunter, while moving from the starting role to the bench 23 games in showed a willingness to put the team first, it did not go the way Hunter or the team hoped. There was no reset, no sign of positive regression, nothing. Just more of the same, a struggling Hunter, doing the same thing over and over again.
While Denis Schroeder and Keon Ellis do not project to fill in what Hunter was supposed to be, it just felt like it wasn’t going to improve with Hunter. The hypothetical of “when everyone’s healthy, this team makes sense” was not realistic. The Cavaliers and healthy have become antonyms, and team building based on something that just hasn’t happened is ill-advised. The Cavaliers are building for a scenario where they have options to cover up absences, and Hunter doesn’t provide that solution.
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