De’Andre Hunter is a Cavalier again. Former UVA basketball teammates De’Andre Hunter and Ty Jerome are reuniting in the NBA as the result of a trade between the Atlanta Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday afternoon.
According to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Hawks are sending Hunter to the Cavaliers in exchange for Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, three second-round picks and two pick swaps. The trade was finalized just hours before Thursday’s trade deadline.
Hunter has long been rumored as a trade piece for the Hawks despite him having by far the best season of his career. In his sixth season in the NBA, Hunter has been coming off the bench for the Hawks for the first time and has fully embraced that role, increasing his scoring average from 15.6 points per game last season to 19.0 points per game this season and shooting a career-high 39.3% from beyond the arc. Hunter has scored 20+ points in 21 games this season and matched his career-high with a 35-point outburst against the Minnesota Timberwolves on January 27th.
Hunter is playing the best basketball of his professional career and now he has a chance to be a key contributor and potential starter for one of the top championship contenders in the league.
The Hawks are currently 23-28 and sit in ninth place in the Eastern Conference standings, while the Cleveland Cavaliers have the best record in the Eastern Conference at 41-10, holding a five game lead over the Boston Celtics, and the second-best record in the entire NBA.
The reunion of Hunter and Jerome on the Cavs comes just a week after the two former Wahoos scored 20+ points against one another when the Hawks and the Cavaliers played on January 30th. In that game, Jerome scored 20 points and dished out six assists to help Cleveland to a victory, while Hunter scored 25 points and was a perfect 12/12 from the free throw line in Atlanta’s loss.
Ty Jerome is also in the midst of his best season of professional basketball to date. Injuries have plagued him throughout his career, but Jerome is finally healthy and showing what he can do as Cleveland’s backup point guard, averaging career-highs in scoring (11.3 points per game) and three-point shooting (43.1%).
On January 25th against the Philadelphia 76ers, Jerome had an outstanding showing of historic proportion as he became just the 11th player in NBA history, and second this season (joining Steph Curry), to make eight threes in a game without a single miss.
Jerome finished that game with a career-high 33 points on 11/14 shooting, 8/8 from three, three assists, three rebounds, and two steals, becoming the first reserve in NBA history to have that stat line.
Now, Hunter and Jerome are teammates again for the first time since they led Virginia on that epic run to win the 2019 NCAA National Championship. The Hoos turned in a 65-5 record when Hunter and Jerome both played and won two ACC regular season title and one ACC Tournament Championship, earned two No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, and of course, won the program’s first national title.
Six years later, Ty Jerome and De’Andre Hunter will join forces again and look to win another championship, this time with the Cleveland Cavaliers instead of the Virginia Cavaliers.
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