LOS ANGELES — When Atlanta Hawks power forward De’Andre Hunter entered Crypto.com Arena on Sunday night, he had on sunglasses and a Christian Dior jacket. He looked like a player who was going to have a big game.
Dre brought the Hollywood fit tonight and the guys LOVE it 😎😂 pic.twitter.com/bF1efQLuR3
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) March 18, 2024
With the Hawks missing All-Star point guard Trae Young due to left-hand surgery and small forward Saddiq Bey due to a torn left ACL, it didn’t take long for Hunter to make his mark. In 24 minutes, 9 seconds, the Hawks forward outscored the LA Clippers bench 20-17 in a 110-93 Hawks win that did not have a single lead change after the first quarter.
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“I just try to play in the flow of the game,” Hunter told The Athletic on Sunday night after making 8 of 13 field goals. “I don’t really try to think about how much I’m scoring or what I’m doing and things like that. But we were playing well as a team, and I was making shots, so I guess that’s the contributing factor to that. But I try not to think about how I’m doing.”
Ever since Young exited the lineup in late February, Hunter, 26, has played some of the best basketball of his five-year career. In the last 11 games, Hunter is averaging 16.9 points per game on 50.4 percent shooting from the field, and he has made 2.3 3s per game while shooting 43.9 percent from beyond the arc. Only Jordan Poole of the Washington Wizards and Malik Monk of the Sacramento Kings have scored more total points off the bench than Hunter since the All-Star break.
The Hawks, who have been under .500 since Dec. 2, have now won six of the past 11 games despite being short-handed. Much of that success can be attributed to Hunter.
“He’s playing really well,” Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said. “We just want him really on offense just to attack, to be in attack mode. And he’s embraced that. And he’s a fun guy to coach and a heck of a player.”
It’s been a long road for Hunter to get here as injuries have always been a part of his basketball story. He overcame a broken leg that prevented him from playing as a sophom*ore in high school at Friends’ Central near Philadelphia to become one of the top forwards in the 2016 class. Hunter redshirted as a freshman at Virginia and then missed the 2018 NCAA Tournament due to a broken wrist on his left hand.
After being selected as the fourth pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, Hunter’s injuries followed him to the NBA. He underwent surgery on his right meniscus in 2021 with the Hawks, causing him to miss the team’s only conference finals appearance since 2016. He also missed time in 2021-22 due to right wrist surgery and in 2022-23 a right hip injury caused him to miss time on the court.
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In December, Hunter had a non-surgical procedure performed to address right knee inflammation that caused him to miss time at the end of the month and most of January. He has yet to play 70 games in a season.
“S— happens,” Hunter told The Athletic. “And a lot of sh– has happened to me personally, sh– happens to the team, things like that.”
Hunter, who signed a four-year, $95 million extension in 2022 as a core part of the Hawks, which had Young, an All-Star point guard, and had added All-Star Dejounte Murray to the roster, was a steady presence in Atlanta’s starting lineup before his most recent injury. Then Snyder decided to have Hunter come off the bench. Initially, the move was made to help Hunter as he worked his way back with a minute restriction. In the process, the Hawks may have unlocked the best version of Hunter.
“It’s not like this is something that is written in stone,” Snyder explained before Sunday’s game of Hunter’s new role. “But it’s allowed us to do that, and the person and player that he is, he didn’t blink.”
While some players wouldn’t adjust well to coming off the bench, Hunter kept his composure and has held his head high.
“I feel like, you know, some dudes may go to the bench and pout about it, feel bad about it or sad about it,” Hunter said. “But at the end of the day, as long as I’m on the court, I feel like I can make an impact, whether that’s coming off the bench or starting. So I’m coming off the bench now, but I know that’s not going to stop me from producing on the court.”
As a scorer, Hunter has yet to average 16 points per game for a season, nor attempt 4.0 free throws. He has never averaged 5.0 rebounds despite his size and a career workload of 30.6 minutes per game. He has never averaged 2.0 assists, 1.0 steals or 1.0 blocks per game. Atlanta is 28th in defensive efficiency this season and has never been better than 18th in Hunter’s five seasons.
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Hunter excels with his shooting ability. While he doesn’t always do a great job of getting to the basket, he finishes efficiently from just about everywhere. He makes 66.3 percent of his shots in the restricted area, 44.6 percent of his shots in the paint outside of the restricted area, 45.5 percent of his midrange field-goal attempts and better than 41 percent of both his corner 3s and above-the-break 3s.
With Young out, Hunter is averaging about one more field-goal attempt per game. But he also gets to his spots quickly and efficiently when he gains an advantage.
The first time Hunter touches the ball in Sunday’s game he beats Kawhi Leonard via an off-ball screen and finishes over the smaller Terance Mann in the paint while drawing a foul.
Going from being a starting small forward to playing more as a power forward in second units has allowed Hunter to go from being an ordinary perimeter player, who is hidden in lineups that feature Young and Murray, to being more of a matchup problem against lesser defenders. Asking Hunter to beat players like Leonard and Paul George consistently isn’t a recipe for success, but Hunter can leverage his shooting ability against bigger players and win.
“As a four, he can cause a lot of mismatch problems, especially offensively,” Hawks backup point guard Trent Forrest told The Athletic. “Other teams are probably playing bigger four-men than him. He can pull them away from the basket with his shot. And then he also can put the ball on the ground and get to the basket. So it puts other teams in big predicaments.”
Hunter displayed his ability to beat multiple out-of-position defenders on Sunday. In the third quarter, Clippers backup center Mason Plumlee switched to Hunter, who beat Plumlee for points on an isolation drive that required an off-hand finish with a high degree of difficulty.
Then to finish the game, Hunter was guarded by the stout but shorter James Harden. Hunter took Harden baseline instead of launching a jump shot and was able to finish against a Clippers defense that had no rim protection on the floor.
While Hunter hasn’t always made the biggest impact defensively in terms of big plays individually or the team’s success overall, he is relied on to defend multiple positions. With Young out, the Hawks have been much better defensively, allowing only 109.8 points per 100 possessions since Feb. 24. That ranks eighth in the NBA.
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Hunter had a highlight play Sunday that saved a basket. Clippers backup center Daniel Theis back cut Hawks center Bruno Fernando, opening the lane. But Hunter was able to rotate from the corner and send Theis’ dunk attempt packing. A key part of being a power forward is secondary rim protection, and Hunter provided that.
The Hawks still have an uphill climb on their hands as a 30-37 team ranked 10th in the Eastern Conference. But they have a 4.5 game cushion on the Brooklyn Nets to stay in the Play-In Tournament hunt, and Young will return soon.
How the Hawks continue to defend and spread the wealth offensively once Young comes back will be an interesting dilemma, and how that affects Hunter’s production magnifies that.
(Photo: Steven Ryan / Getty Images)
Law Murray is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the LA Clippers. Prior to joining The Athletic, he was an NBA editor at ESPN, a researcher at NFL Media and a contributor to DrewLeague.com and ClipperBlog. Law is from Philadelphia, Pa., and is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Follow Law on Twitter @LawMurrayTheNU
