Last year, I wrote a section for our Sacramento Kings season preview, asking the question whether Buddy Hield could be a scheme-changing shooter.
At that point, his profile was that of a very good catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter but one who hadn’t quite mastered shooting off the dribble — he was at 41.7 percent on catch-and-shoot 3s in 2016-17 and 34.3 on pull-ups. The argument was that if he could become a better pull-up shooter he could work as a primary ball-handler and unlock all sorts of possibilities for the Kings offense.
Hield made good on at least part of my hypothesis — he very much looks like a scheme-changing shooter. However, the improvement wasn’t on his pull-up shooting — he managed just 34.7 percent on pull-ups. What he did was become one of the most effective catch-and-shoot threats in the league, hitting 49.6 percent. J.J. Barea was the only player with at least 100 attempts who made a better percentage, but Hield managed his mark on nearly twice as many attempts.
A consistent pull-up 3-pointer could have made Hield a dangerous pick-and-roll threat, but he finished last season in just the 34th percentile in scoring efficiency on the pick-and-roll. He compensated by ranking in the 87th percentile on spot-ups and, more importantly, the 77th percentile coming off screens.
Hield finished just 1.4 possessions per game as a shooter coming off screens, about 10 percent of his total offensive possessions but his skill as a shooter and off-ball gravity are one of the few reliable wrinkles the Kings could add to their offense this season. What became apparent last season was that Hield is not going to develop into a Stephen Curry-type on-ball creator, bending the defense with the threat of them launching a 3 at a moment’s notice. Thinking of Hield as a J.J. Redick-type off-ball threat is probably a much more useful comparison at this point, both for understanding his skills and for how the Kings can get the most out of him.
The Kings are swollen with potential but still light on functional elements of an efficient offense. Marvin Bagley’s individual scoring, De’Aaron Fox’s and Bogdan Bogdanovic’s creation and Willie Cauley-Stein’s rim-running are all still mostly hypothetical at this point. Hield’s off-ball shooting and gravity are a tool they should be able to lean on heavily this season, picking up easy points and making everyone else’s jobs easier.