Cavs: Trade or Fade with Simmons and others being shopped
Cavs: Trade or Fade with NBA players being shopped – Buddy Hield
The Sacramento Kings have to make a change to shake free of their extended malaise and put a winning team out on the court. After finishing with the league’s worst defense last year they sought to make a change, drafting Baylor guard Davion Mitchell, perhaps the draft’s best backcourt defender.
The hope is that De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Haliburton and Mitchell can form a solid two-way backcourt rotation, with Mitchell even playing alongside both in three-guard lineups reminiscent of the Oklahoma City Thunder a few years back with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chris Paul and Dennis Schroder. That leaves sharpshooting Buddy Hield out in the cold.
He has some versatility to play at the 3, but overall this looks like a step away from Hield and towards a younger core that is able to survive on defense. That makes Hield expendable, and the Cavs could consider swooping in to trade for him.
He fits a need of wing shooting, and there would be minutes available on the team behind Collin Sexton and Isaac Okoro. The problem with adding Hield is the same reason the Kings replaced him: he can shoot, but he is a defensive sieve and lacks dynamic on-ball creation skills. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze, if you will; Hield doesn’t bring enough to the table to justify his weaknesses.
He is a useful player in the right situation, but to bring him in the Cavs would need to find matching salary for his $23 million contract. Given the difficulty of that fact, it’s not worth it for the Cavs to make a play for this particular wing.
Verdict: Fade
Next. 3 reasons for optimism about Collin Sexton’s future. dark
Ben Simmons is a unique talent, and while he is more difficult to build around than a traditional wing he has a lot of truly spectacular strengths that don’t often hit the open market. He is a player to target at the right price. Otherwise, players such as Buddy Hield and John Wall are just not worth the contracts they are on, and therefore are not players the Cavs should be interested in.