Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield took the NCAA by storm this season, dazzling opponents and fans alike with his sweet shooting, leading him to the Naismith Player of the Year Award and plenty of other accolades and recognition. Now moving on to the NBA, the question becomes how will his skill set translate and how much will Hield’s age hurt his draft stock.
Buddy Hield is only 22 years old. By the time he plays his first NBA game, he will still be a month away from turning 23. By nearly all life standards, Hield is a young man. Except, by NBA rookie standards, where he may as well be considered a fossil compared to some of the other prospects of the past and the present.
Fellow draft prospect Dragan Bender will still be a few weeks away from turning 19 when he plays his first NBA game. Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks will be entering his fourth NBA season as Hield enters his first, and he is still younger than Buddy Hield by almost a year.
In a landscape where prospects only have to be one year removed from high school to enter the draft, the college senior has become less and less valuable. Since 2010, the only seniors selected in the top ten were Frank Kaminsky in 2015 and Jimmer Fredette, and they were barely in the top ten, drafted 9th and 10th overall, respectively. The last time a college senior was taken with the first overall pick was all the way back in 2000, when the New Jersey Nets took Kenyon Martin out of Cincinnati.
NBA teams see prospects like Antetokounmpo when he was drafted and Bender this year as players that aren’t even near their fullest potential, giving those teams the chance to mold them into exactly the type of players they want. College seniors like Hield spent most of their developmental years in college systems, the possibility that they have already reached their ceilings is far greater, and the player they are now is the player teams will likely get.
Fortunately for Hield, the type of player he is now is a player that plenty of NBA teams covet.
Similar to Kaminsky’s career arc, Hield was a quality player his junior year that would’ve likely been a mid-to-late first-round pick had he declared. But he decided to return to Oklahoma for his senior season, and he put together an absolutely stellar individual and team season, culminating in a Final Four run and the aforementioned Naismith Player of the Year award.
Hield put up a monstrous 25.0 points per game, as it appeared to be very difficult for him to miss shots from anywhere on the floor. Overall, he made a little over half his shots, shooting 50.1 percent from the field. He shot 46 percent from three, especially incredible considering he attempted 8.7 threes per game compared to only 7.5 twos, which he hit 55 percent of the time. His 55 percent mark on twos also shows how he isn’t a one-dimensional scorer, as he also had success from mid-range and at the rim, using his strength and footwork to score inside. Hield also shot 88 percent from the free-throw line, bringing his season split to a godly 50/46/88.
He doesn’t have point guard-level handles, but Hield did well when he had to create his own shot, maintaining a solid shooting percentage and successfully using a variety of step backs and fadeaways to get open and free to shoot. His intangibles are also off the charts, if there was such a thing as an intangible chart. He was a great leader at Oklahoma even before his senior season, and his work ethic is second to none.
There is some downside to Hield, of course. At 6-4.5, he has okay size for a shooting guard; his 6-8.5 wingspan helps, but he isn’t big enough to slide down to the small forward position, and he certainly isn’t a point guard, so he really can’t play anywhere but at the two, limiting his versatility. And while he worked hard on the defensive end this season, Hield still can be a liability on that end of the floor, again limiting the amount of options a team can have with him on the floor. His 3.1 turnovers to 2.0 assists per game this year also add against his abilities to create for his team.
Buddy Hield is an excellent scorer, and his shooting abilities should have no problem translating to the NBA, but how valuable is an incredible scorer who can’t help too much in a lot of other areas? It’s an important question all teams will view differently, which means where he goes on draft night isn’t set in stone.
But he is likely to be the highest drafted senior in a while. Our own draft expert Zach Reynolds has Hield as the seventh-best player on his Top 100 Big Board. DraftExpress has him going sixth overall to the Pelicans in their latest mock draft. NBA.com created a mock draft that was a compilation of a variety of other mock drafts to attempt to reach a mock consensus, and it had Hield going 4th overall to the Suns. USA Today’s Derek Bodner has him going seventh overall to the Nuggets in his most recent mock draft.
Clearly, there isn’t a true consensus on Hield’s destination, but anywhere from 5th with Minnesota to 8th with Sacramento feels most likely to me. Minnesota, New Orleans, Denver, and Sacramento all could greatly use more perimeter shooting on their roster, and a potential leader like Hield would also be a great add for any of these young teams.
Being a college senior is an immediately downfall to any player’s draft stock, but the talented and hard-working Buddy Hield has put himself in position to be one of the first names off the board come draft night later this month.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
