Buddy Hield is here to break the stereotype of the college basketball player that needed all four years of NCAA eligibility to become a lottery pick. Not only did he have a classic takeover performance against VCU to get the Oklahoma Sooners to the Sweet 16, but he also showed why he should be considered as a top-five selection on draft night.
Every NBA Draft seems to have a Ben Simmons, if not in talent, then certainly in hype. And every Ben Simmons seems to have a Brandon Ingram, a similar player who might just usurp the status of being the top pick. Last season it was Karl-Anthony Towns vs. Jahlil Okafor and the year before it was Andrew Wiggins vs. Jabari Parker.
Even if there is not a player who is the undisputed top pick, there are always a few "one-and-done" freshmen that teams zero in on, and for good reason. Twenty-year-olds are bound to have more basketball left in them and also benefit from scout-speak like "still has time to fill out," "has a high ceiling" or, at the very least, "shows promise."
Twenty-four-year-olds just do not get the same kind of phrases attached to their draft profiles. The last time an NBA team with a top-five draft selection took a senior was in 2006 when the Atlanta Hawks took Shelden Williams fifth overall. But what if there was a senior that has already shown what kind of player he can be? And what if that player was a clutch shooter with the size and skill to round out his game in a reasonable timeframe?
If the NBA Lottery awards your team the third, fourth or fifth pick, you will not be getting Simmons or Ingram, but you might just get Buddy Hield. Before you dismiss him as a player that needed all four years in college just to get into the conversation, take a look at some of the NBA-ready offensive moves he put on display against VCU, an 85-81 comeback win:
0:16, 0:22 - shoots off the dribble
0:33, 1:20 - challenges larger defender in the lane
0:43 - catches-and-shoots in transition
1:28 - uses a pivot to create space for a jump shot
Hield is like a pitcher that can hit the strike zone consistently with three different pitches, which is to say he has a high floor. But what if Hield develops one or more of those pitches into something unhittable? What if he adds a pitch? He has prototypical size for a point guard and a prototypical attitude for a shooting guard.
When VCU guard Doug Brooks called Hield out for scoring just seven points in the first half, the Big 12 Player of the Year scored 26 in the second half. Brooks later said his trash talk "didn't work."
