{"id":122368,"date":"2025-02-06T14:24:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=122368"},"modified":"2025-02-06T14:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:31:07","slug":"hawks-cavs-deandre-hunter-trade-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/06\/hawks-cavs-deandre-hunter-trade-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks, Cavs Agree To Trade Before Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ahead of Thursday&#8217;s 3PM (EST) deadline, the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers agreed to a trade that will send former fourth overall pick <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/h\/huntede01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">De&#8217;Andre Hunter<\/a> to Northeast Ohio. In return, Georgia&#8217;s squad will acquire <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/leverca01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Caris LeVert<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/n\/niangge01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Georges Niang<\/a>, three second-round picks and two pick swaps.<\/p>\n<h2>Hawks, Cavs Agree To De&#8217;Andre Hunter Trade Before Deadline<\/h2>\n<p>In a vacuum, the Cavs appear to have received the best player in the trade, as Hunter is averaging a career-high 19.0 points per game. For reference, LeVert (10.2) and Niang (8.7) don&#8217;t score 19.0 points per game combined.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Atlanta Hawks are trading forward De&#8217;Andre Hunter to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, three second-round picks and two swaps, sources tell ESPN. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5fpE4LJzpK\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/5fpE4LJzpK<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShamsCharania\/status\/1887572277761343556?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 6, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Notably, there were rumblings that the 2025 Sixth Man of the Year favorite was <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/15\/hawks-deandre-hunter-untouchable-trade-deadline\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">classified as untouchable<\/a>. That being said, after the Dallas Mavericks traded <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/doncilu01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luka Doncic<\/a> to the Los Angeles Lakers in one of the most surprising trades of all-time, how could anyone be sure they were safe? Much less a player who has <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/19\/hawks-unsung-deandre-hunter-flying-under-radar\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">constantly been involved<\/a> in trade rumors?<\/p>\n<p>In any case, Hunter arrives in Cleveland at a time in which they lead the Eastern Conference at 41-10. In fact, the Cavs have the best win-loss record in the league. As a result, they&#8217;ve catapulted themselves from the realm of playoff contenders. For the first time since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jamesle01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LeBron James<\/a> left Cleveland for Los Angeles, they legitimately appear capable of winning an NBA title.<\/p>\n<p>Their chances have elevated after they gave themselves more of a scoring punch than LeVert or Niang were able to. It should be noted that Hunter is a far sturdier defender than Niang as well. For that reason, the draft assets that they surrendered for the combo forward are worth it.<\/p>\n<h3>What&#8217;s Next For The Hawks?<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear where the Hawks go from here.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, All-Star guard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/y\/youngtr01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Trae Young<\/a> is ultra-competitive, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/03\/06\/hawks-trae-young-candid-trade-rumors\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">hoping to bring a championship<\/a> to Atlanta. On the other hand, rising star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/johnsja05.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jalen Johnson<\/a> &#8211;his second-in-command &#8212;<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/29\/hawks-jalen-johnson-out-for-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">has been ruled out<\/a> for the remainder of 2024-25. When at the crossroads, the Hawks then made the decision to trade Hunter, who has been their leading scorer in multiple games this season.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, it would seem like they&#8217;re tanking. Yet, the San Antonio Spurs own the Hawks&#8217; first-round pick in 2025. Not only that but the pick is unprotected, giving them no incentive to purposely lose games.<\/p>\n<p>If this was the LeVert gave teams more of a spark offensively early in his career, it might be different. However, he averaged just 12.5 points per game with the Cavs. Furthermore, he&#8217;s on the final season of his contract, which was likely attractive to an Atlanta team constantly considering cost-cutting measures.<\/p>\n<div class=\"modal-image-setImageMetadata\">\n<p class=\"ng-binding\">\u00a9 Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ahead of Thursday&#8217;s 3PM (EST) deadline, the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers agreed to a trade that will send former fourth overall pick De&#8217;Andre Hunter to Northeast Ohio. In return, Georgia&#8217;s squad will acquire Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, three second-round picks and two pick swaps. Hawks, Cavs Agree To De&#8217;Andre Hunter Trade Before Deadline In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":122375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,4,1608,9,556,34],"tags":[1070,1875,34352,3853,596,1382,1349],"class_list":["post-122368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","category-hawks","category-basketball","category-cavaliers","category-nba-draft","category-spurs","tag-caris-levert","tag-deandre-hunter","tag-georges-niang","tag-jalen-johnson","tag-nba-playoffs","tag-nba-trade","tag-trae-young"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122368"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122379,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122368\/revisions\/122379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}