Buddy Hield Struggles in NBA Summer League Debut
By Chip Rouse
Buddy Hield made his NBA debut on Friday – even if it was just the NBA Summer League, absent the real stars of the NBA but ripe with newly minted draft selections and other first- and -second-year players aspiring for roster spots in the league.
The former Oklahoma All-American and college player of the year last season doesn’t have to worry about making the roster of the New Orleans Pelicans, the team that drafted him last month with the seventh overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, but he does want to perform well in his initial game-like competition against NBA talent and show his new employer that he is worthy of being a first-round lottery pick in this year’s draft.
Friday was the first day of the annual NBA Las Vegas Summer League, which is made up of 24 NBA teams, who will play a total of 67 games over 11 days. The teams are typically composed of a mix of draft selections, second-year players and unsigned free agents.
Hield’s team, the Pelicans, were matched up on opening day of this year’s Sin City Summer League against the Los Angeles Lakers, which featured Brandon Ingram, selected No. 2 overall in the draft, five spots higher than the former Sooner super star.
Hield wore the number 24 on his jersey, and it had “Hield” on the back, but that was about the only resemblance of Oklahoma’s second leading scorer all-time and the player we saw ring up 30 or more points 12 times and shoot better than 45 percent from three-point range in his senior college season.
The best-ever basketball player to come from the Bahamas struggled with his shot the entire game. He put up a total of 20 shots in the game in close to 32 minutes of action (the games are 40 minutes, contested in four 10-minute quarters), but connected on just five of them. Eight of those shots were from behind the three-point arc, where Hield was one of the best in the game in college, but only one found the range.
Hield’s 20-percent shooting percentage overall in the game with the young Lakers and 12 percent on the three-ball were well off what we saw from him in his final two seasons at Oklahoma. He shot 50 percent overall and 46 percent from three-point range in his final college season.
His play on the defensive end was nothing to write home about, either. The Lakers outscored New Orleans by 18 points during the time that Hield was on the floor, which was most of the game.
The former OU star and two-time Big 12 Player of the Year did grab six rebounds in the game, but he also committed four turnovers, an aspect of his game that he had some issues with at Oklahoma.
“Five for 20,” Hield repeated when he learned from reporters after the game that was his shooting percentage. “That’s horrible,” he said to ESPN’s Justin Verrier and other writers covering the Las Vegas NBA Summer League in the post-game press conference.
Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry had told Kratz earlier in the day, “I’m not going to get overly excited if he (Hield) gets 30 tonight, and I’m not going to get overly excited if he goes 3 for 17.”
New Orleans’ top pick in this year’s draft ended the game with 13 points, but it may have been the quietest 13-point performance for the former Oklahoma star in over two years.
That’s clearly not anything for the Pelican’s head coach to get excited about. He, like the Sooner Nation faithful, knows that as far as Buddy Hield is concerned, performances like to one against the Lakers in the Summer League are the exception and not the norm.
Buddy Buckets work way too hard and is too good for that not to be the case.