Charade over for Hunter

LAS VEGAS — For about 16 days, the Hawks were like Fight Club for De’Andre Hunter. The first rule of the Hawks was that he couldn’t talk about the Hawks. No wearing their apparel in public, either. He was free to use the Lakers hat that he was handed and forced to wear as the No. 4 pick on draft night, but as for the Hawks — the team that everyone in the world knew he was on — Hunter couldn’t join the club yet. “It felt like I wasn’t drafted,” Hunter said Sunday, when he was finally allowed to wear Hawks apparel in public — first in his summer league debut and then in a press conference to officially announce his signing after the trade to Atlanta, which didn’t become official until late Saturday night. The Lakers originally owned the No. 4 pick, so it was their hat Hunter wore in Brooklyn. But even before the draft, news broke the Pelicans had acquired the pick and then dealt it to the Hawks. None of those trades passed until Saturday, which meant Hunter missed out on practices and the Hawks’ first summer league game.

“I was basically still in college,” Hunter said. “So it’s just weird, not being able to talk about the team everyone knows you’re on but you can’t talk about it. I’m just happy now. I get to be a Hawk. I can talk about it, I can tell everyone, so I’m good.”

Hunter was one of 27 picks that were traded in June’s draft, 11 of them in the first round.

“It’s a hard situation because if you don’t have their rights, even though everyone kind of knows it, [you can’t talk about it],” Hawks GM Travis Schlenk said.

Schlenk was happy to finally be able to discuss the defensiveminded Hunter, whom he believes has more in the tank offensively than what he was able to show at Virginia.

It didn’t come out in Hunter’s pro debut Sunday — his first game since leading the Cavaliers to a national title in April — as he recorded six points on 2-of-8 shooting to go with four turnovers, three rebounds, a block and an assist.