CHICAGO \u2014 The floundering Cavs are making a lineup change. <\/p>\n
Sources tell cleveland.com that starting small forward De\u2019Andre Hunter will move to the bench Wednesday night against the Chicago Bulls \u2014 and for the foreseeable future. <\/p>\n
Rugged second-year swingman Jaylon Tyson, who has earned repeated praise from coaches and teammates, will take over Hunter\u2019s old spot. <\/p>\n
Hunter, who has started the first 23 games that he has appeared in, continues to struggle in a starting role, with two single-digit scoring performances in the past three games. <\/p>\n
Sources say this move, which was compared to a slumping baseball player getting dropped further down the lineup, is not only intended to stabilize Cleveland\u2019s inconsistent \u2014 and thinned-out \u2014 bench while the team continues to deal with a rash of injuries, but it is expected to help Hunter find his comfort zone once again. He will be back in the role that he manned in 2024-25, which led to a career campaign split between Atlanta and Cleveland. <\/p>\n
As a result of Max Strus\u2019 offseason foot injury and a subsequent conversation with Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson about Hunter\u2019s best role, the 28-year-old swingman was named the Opening Night starter. He has been a fixture of that ever-changing group. But the fit hasn\u2019t been right, and with the Cavaliers mired in a funk \u2014 six losses in the last nine games \u2014 Atkinson opted to make the swap. <\/p>\n
In 23 games this season, Hunter is averaging 15.4 points on 42.9% from the field and 30.3% from 3-point range. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 The floundering Cavs are making a lineup change. Sources tell cleveland.com that starting small forward De\u2019Andre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-352398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}