Virginia Basketball: Breakdown of De’Andre Hunter’s Summer League debut

Film & Analysis: Offense

While De’Andre Hunter’s defense is slightly more of a known commodity, his offensive transition to the NBA is far more up in the air. How will he contribute? What’s his role? Can he be effective? Is his shooting to be believed? What about his in-between game?

For those who questioned whether or not Hunter’s perimeter shooting was valid, whether or not he was capable of creating points for himself off the bounce and as a driver against NBA athleticism and NBA defense, and whether or not Hunter’s feel level and floor vision/awareness were high enough to contribute meaningfully, Sunday’s game did little to create optimism or assuage prior concerns.

Accruing six points on 2-of-8 shooting (1-3 3PT, 1-2 FT) with three rebounds, one assist and one block through 21 minutes of action, it was evident that Hunter’s debut was far from perfect. Throw in two fouls, four turnovers, and the fact that he sported a poor plus-minus of negative-18, and that tarnishes his day even more.

Before burying him anymore, let’s look at some of the positives, first.

Hunter’s playmaking, albeit rough and inconsistent (which will be discussed below), was relatively encouraging given his ability to hit open teammates whilst drawing attention from the defense.

Here, Hunter comes off of a pindown and dribble handoff, turning to drive to the basket before delivering a one-handed pass to the wing, with his teammate’s original defender digging to cut off Hunter’s path to the basket. It was a simple one-read play, but Hunter was wise to draw the attention before reading and reacting to the defensive coverage.

Receiving the ball in the secondary break, Hunter uses a trio of dribble moves before bursting toward the paint, drawing in Okogie and thus leaving a teammate open on the perimeter. He hits the pass, with his teammate eventually knocking down a three (and rewarding Hunter with a delayed assist). The series of crossovers weren’t really effective, as he has decent ball control but limited wiggle/shake that’s actually effective, but he made another smart read-and-react play with the ball in his hands.

Granted, albeit not advanced or dynamic, his handle can help him create some advantages against weaker defenders. Here, heading downhill out of a weak screen, Hunter takes advantage of the switch and defensive miscommunication between Mitch Creek and Jordan McLaughlin, decelerating briefly before bursting to the rim and making an impressive dump-off pass to Bruno Fernando in the dunker spot (who gets fouled). This was perhaps his best play of the game, given all that it involved (off-the-dribble game, deceleration move, attack against defensive miscommunication, and a shot fake with a mid-air dump-off).

Hunter gets the ball in the secondary break again, this time with Naz Reid as the only nearby defender between himself and the basket. Hunter goes between the legs and uses a righty hesitation move to blow by the lead-footed Reid, drawing a foul on the layup attempt.

One of Hunter’s tried and true elements of offense as a Cavalier was his ability to square up against smaller, weaker forwards in the post (1.018 PPP, 88th percentile in 2018-19), where he’d either use dribble moves to get to the basket or use calculated footwork to create space as a face-up shooter.

Although he misses the jumper here, his jab step created enough separation between Hunter and Jared Terrell for him to rise up into his shot. It’s a subtle move, but a good one. Perhaps this was a simple miss, or perhaps it was affected by how slow the release was — Terrell did manage to get a hand in Hunter’s face before the shot left his hands, and Hunter does in fact need to speed up his release.

Again in the post, Hunter receives an entry pass and spins to his left, creating separation to throw up a perfectly soft one-handed push shot from the left block.

A 41.9 percent three-point shooter (160 attempts) at Virginia, Hunter has proven that he’s capable of hitting open three-pointers of the catch-and-shoot variety. I’m dubious over whether or not he’ll be a successful shooter in the NBA given how incredibly slow his release is, but he’s shown enough to have faith in him hitting threes as long as he’s given plenty of time and space (although such opportunities could be sparse). Here, he drills a three off the catch, with his defender sagging too far off to really contest the shot. The shot is very slow, and the mechanics are somewhat awkward — his upper-body motion is fine and fluid, but it seems like his knees buckle slightly. I’m not too sure if this means something or nothing, but it’s something to monitor in the future, as it could affect how fluidly energy is transferred during his shot.

But this is where the positives end, unfortunately, as he was otherwise a bit of a mess on the offensive end, hence the 2-of-8 shooting and modest 6-point performance.

Summer League is a chance for players to experiment with aspects of their games, and for De’Andre Hunter, aggressive scoring and ball-handling were the two areas that he put to the test against Minnesota. Eight shots isn’t much, not even for 21 minutes, but the manner in which he attempted such shots differed from his usual offensive rhythm — meaning, he attempted to create his own shots whenever he got the ball, even if said shots didn’t come within the flow of the offense.

As his subpar shooting numbers indicate, he didn’t find too much initial success with such a mindset, and, with his four turnovers considered as well, it’s clear that his on-ball production was ultimately underwhelming, too.

Pushing the ball in transition, Hunter notices that not a soul is set in place to defend a possible perimeter attempt, and promptly steps into an early-shot clock jumper with his foot on the line. The shot is slow, per usual, and not that fluid (it’s a bit segmented at the top given the slow release), with the ball clanging off the rim. It’s not a bad shot — it’s pretty early in the shot clock, but considering how open he was, it was a permissible attempt. And, considering that he needs his reps as a shooter, it should potentially help him long-term.

Mentioned previously, Hunter’s handle isn’t necessarily one that puts pressure on opposing defenses. Rather, while it’s relatively compact, it’s not that effective.

Here he gets a switch out of the pick-and-roll onto a poor defender in Naz Reid, someone that Hunter should theoretically be able to take advantage of in space. Instead of attempting to blow past him, or even hitting the roller in the post (the 6-foot-10 Fernando has a sizeable height advantage over the 6-foot-6 Creek), Hunter tries to create separation off the dribble. He fails to do so, and steps back into a pull-up three-pointer that is so slow that Reid is able to recover and contest the shot. It’s a poor shot, both in regards to how much time he had to set up a better alternative and how poor the shot selection was.

The intersection of poor shot selection (and perhaps poor feel) and poor shake was apparent again here, with Hunter taking nine seconds of the offensive possession to repeatedly attempt to take Creek off the dribble. He isolates, and, despite an array of dribble “moves” (including a slip), he can’t create enough separation to create an optimal shot, and settles for a suboptimal deep mid-range pull-up from the top of the key, which expectedly clangs off the back of the rim. That’s just not a good shot (and, yes, it was painfully slow).

His struggles with the ball and shot selection weren’t exclusive to shots from the perimeter, either. At the top of the third quarter, Hunter gets an advantageous switch onto the smaller 6-foot-1 Jordan McLaughlin, but opts to back him down all the way from the three-point line. He overpowers him, as expected, but throws up a heavily contested post fadeaway after McLaughlin bites on a pump fake. Perhaps he thought he could get a friendly whistle and anticipated contact, but no such whistle nor contact was there to help him, and he instead launched a horrific shot that failed to even hit rim.

Hunter tries to capitalize off-the-dribble in the secondary break with a drive to the basket, but gets met easily at the rim (with a phenomenal rotation and vertical contest from Creek) and has his errant layup blocked. Despite calling for a clearout to get to the rack, Hunter lacked the handle, burst, and vertical pop to explode to the rim and finish. Making matters slightly worse is that the shot, again, wasn’t an ideal one, as he had a possible wrap-around pass to Fernando in the dunker’s spot available if he had seen the window and didn’t have scoring blinders on. We can credit the defense for pressuring and contesting him, and excuse the missed read, but the athletic concern is real.

And, to finish this section, we’ll turn to his four turnovers, one of which was the result of an accidental step on the sideline as he began a drive from the perimeter, which isn’t truly worthy of discussion (since it’s one that doesn’t truly mean much). No turnover is ideal, but his turnovers were all of differing severity and type, with some meaning more than others.

Hunter’s footwork in the post, while solid, could use a bit more polishing, as he travels from a triple-threat stance here (shuffling his pivot foot). Tyus Battle does well to body him up, not giving him space for a face-up jumper, thus resulting in the ensuing travel. Far from ideal, but not necessarily a turnover that comes with concerning red flags.

Inbounding the ball, Hunter throws up an uninspired pass that’s picked off easily. Not great, considering that it was tipped immediately, but credit should be given to Creek for how well he defended the inbound, keeping his hands up persistently and forcing Hunter to throw the pass just before he could get a five-second violation.

The last turnover is the one which provides the most cause for concern, as it hints (strongly) toward his possible low feel. Hunter gathers the ball and pushes in transition, with Jordan Sibert running up the court on the wing. It’s a 2-on-4, as Hunter and Sibert are the only two Hawks actively in the play — common sense would say that Hunter, who’s pushing the ball up the middle with all four defenders gravitating around him, should make the simple kick to Sibert on the wing, so that Sibert can either spot-up or continue a hard drive to the rack.

He does neither. Not initially, anyway.

Instead, he attempts a hapless step-through move, stepping right into the thick of three defenders, and rifles a horrific pass over to where Sibert originally was — accept, by the time that he turned to make the pass, a Timberwolf defender was right there waiting to catch it.

Of all the missed shots and turnovers of the day, that play alone was arguably Hunter’s low point, as it displayed poor awareness and decision-making in a situation where he clearly should’ve slowed things down. Instead, he steps into traffic, isn’t aware of the defensive presence, and throws a pass directly to the defense. Just a poor job there.