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3 Legit Trade Suitors Emerge For Kings’ Buddy Hield

3 Legit Trade Suitors Emerge For Kings' Buddy Hield

The Sacramento Kings have made it no secret that they want to move on from Buddy Hield.

Despite multiple attempts to get something done last year, Hield ultimately remained on the roster.

This season he is averaging 16.8 points on 42 percent shooting from the field and 41 percent from beyond the arc in 27.9 minutes per game. Essentially, Hield is putting up better numbers despite a notable decrease in playing time.

Hield is a very talented player, as evidenced by the fact that he set a shooting record last season that even Stephen Curry could not. He just needs the right home.

In a recent conversation with Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, one league executive revealed that a Hield trade was imminent.

“Buddy’s going to be gone,” he said. “They already traded him and had a done deal.”

With that in mind, there are currently two legitimate potential trade suitors for Hield.

The first is the Los Angeles Lakers. LA was obviously very much in the running for Hield this past offseason, ultimately passing on that prospective swap in favor of one that returned them Russell Westbrook. Although they did give up a lot of assets in that trade, it is also worth remembering that Hield’s value isn’t what it was this summer.

Sacramento has had ample opportunity to trade the sharpshooter and failed to do so. Clearly the market for him isn’t what they anticipated it would be. A pathway is there for the Lakers to get him on the cheap.

While LA’s three-point shooting percentage isn’t egregiously bad at the moment (9th in the league with 36.2 percent), it’s simply because they’re not taking too many of them (24th in the league with 31.8 per game). That’s not sustainable in the playoffs, when the game slows down and you need to free up the paint.

If not the Lakers, don’t sleep on the Philadelphia 76ers. Clearly this Ben Simmons situation isn’t going to resolve itself any time soon. He won’t suddenly return to the fold and suit up for a squad he absolutely hates. A trade needs to happen – and although there is one specific team he wants to go to, he has expressed willingness to anywhere at this point.

Shipping Simmons off to Sacramento could be an interesting middle finger from the Sixers’ front office to their disgruntled star, while simultaneously returning a proven three-point threat to line up alongside Seth Curry, Danny Green, Tobias Harris and George Hill.

Finally, don’t sleep on the Indiana Pacers. T.J. Warren and Jeremy Lamb are both free agents after this season, so packaging them alongside draft capital could be a relatively risk-free way to acquire a sharpshooting threat. Hield alongside Malcolm Brogdon, Caris LeVert, Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner would make for a potent group. Plus, Indiana has expressed a willingness to make some big moves on the trade market this year.

One way or another, Hield is getting dealt sooner rather than later. Where precisely he will ultimately end up remains to be seen, though.

Related: Stephen Curry Embarrasses Himself With No-Look Three (Video)

Carlos Garcia

A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.

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