The Prospect Post: Buddy Hield, Somehow Underrated

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Updated on February 4, 2016 7:27PM EST

There have been several times this year when I was in the process of breaking down Hield in this space and then scrapped it. I was very torn about my thoughts on the Sooners shooting guard who is running away with player of the year honors, but it is finally time to address his NBA future. Honestly, I was waiting for some potentially debilitating flaws in his game to become apparent, and Hield has failed to oblige.

DraftExpress has Hield ranked as the 18th-best prospect. ESPN has Hield ranked 14th. Only NBADraft.Net has Hield ranked in the top-10 (seventh) among the three major online rankings. His mean ranking is 13th and the median is 14th, so essentially the online consensus is that Hield is barely a lottery pick. This just doesn't jive with the tape, the numbers, or the weak crop of prospects outside the top-two in this year's draft class.

First, let's try to pinpoint his flaws that might be significant enough to dissuade an NBA team from taking him with a top-10 pick.

The No. 1 reason I could see teams being a little down on Hield is his age. He is 22 years old, and will turn 23 shortly after the start of his rookie season. To put that in perspective, Devin Booker will be 20 when the 2016-17 season kicks off. There are several reasons why older players get downgraded in the draft, and some of them are valid, but in Hield's case, there is important context involved. He improved drastically as a player from his junior year to his senior year. It's not an instance of a player just passing on going in the late first round for several years and then being forced to come out after his senior year. He is a very different prospect now than he was in his first three years of college. Hell, if Frank Kaminsky can be a top-10 pick as a 22-year-old in a much deeper draft last year, Hield should not be projected to go outside the top-10 in this year's class.

The only other reason I could see at least a dozen teams passing on him is a perceived lack of athleticism. He's not an amazing athlete, but he's not Jimmer Fredette either. Let's compare his measurements to Bradley Beal, a highly touted two guard who went to the Wizards with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2012 draft, as he was a one-and-done guy who was perceived to have good athleticism for the position.

Player	Height w/ shoes	Weight	Wingspan
Bradley Beal	6'4.75"	207	6'8"
Buddy Hield	6'4.5"	215	6'8.5"

This is an incomplete accounting of Hield's athleticism, as we don't have measurements for his vertical jump or lateral quickness, but in game action he appears plenty athletic to handle the two in the NBA. Both Hield and Beal will be 23 for the majority of next season, and at this point, it's entirely possible that Hield is a similar athlete to Beal. How then is it possible that Beal might get maxed out this summer while Hield is supposed to be a late lottery pick in the worst draft since 2013? It doesn't make sense, quite frankly, and for that reason I fully expect Hield to be a consensus top-10 pick once June rolls around.

Now the fun part. After going through his perceived shortcomings, it's time to praise Hield's strong suits. The scouting report coming into the year was that he was a bit of a gunner, and this year he has gunned, quite justifiably so. He is shooting 52.8 percent from the field, 51.7 percent from three-point range and 89.6 percent from the free-throw line. Hield is taking a whopping 9.8 three-pointers per game, and as long as he is converting over half of them, he should operate with the green light almost as soon as he crosses halfcourt. Everyone has seen the Kansas highlights by now, but just watch how closely contested some of these threes are:

That has been the kind of defense he has faced all season, and yet he continues to make it rain at a historic clip. So the shooting is tough to argue with. He does it off the bounce, catch and shoot, in transition, step back, you name it. Very few NBA shooters can fire at even a 40 percent clip while taking so many threes off the dribble and with defenders in close proximity. The shooting establishes his floor, as a seventh man who comes in and lets fly. That floor is basically J.R. Smith with better intangibles.

It is abundantly clear that Hield is not just a shooter, at least not in college. Leading the break in transition is something he is very competent at, and at times he reminds me of James Harden in the way he darts and weaves through defenders while maintaining his handle and not picking up the offensive foul.

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He is also quite a willing passer when the situation calls for it, which isn't often, given how good he is at getting and making his own shot. That is another trait he shares with Harden.

While he's not a stopper on the other end, Hield's whole game is centered around how active he is, and it's clear that he is constantly working behind the scenes to improve his craft. There probably won't be too many instances where effort is a problem on defense, and that already gives him a leg up on half of the score-first guards in the NBA. Indeed, it is trick to find many flaws in the Bahamian's game.

As of this moment in early February, my top-five NCAA prospects for this year's draft are as follows:

Ben Simmons
Brandon Ingram
Buddy Hield
Kris Dunn
Ivan Rabb

That can, and inevitably will change between now and June, but it seems pretty clear that Hield is being underrated somehow by the NBA crowd. If he sets the world on fire in March, everything will fall into place in terms of his draft stock, but regardless of where he gets drafted, fantasy fun awaits given his shooting percentages, scoring and three-point shooting.