Paging Buddy Hield: Will Mavs Make The Trade Call?

Paging Buddy Hield: Will Dallas Mavs Make The Trade Call For Disgruntled Kings Player?

DALLAS - Shooting guard Buddy Hield's relationship with the Sacramento Kings has soured to the point where he won't answer to phone when head coach Luke Walton calls him, per Jason Jones of The Athletic.

So maybe it's time for the Dallas Mavericks to place that call.

As DallasBasketball.com has discussed in this space before, Hield is not the perfect player and maybe he's not beyond fault in his relationship with the Kings, a relationship that was poor when Dave Joerger was a coach and a relationship that really went downhill last season when the Kings decided he should come of the bench.

At the same time, Dallas has vowed to be "aggressive'' and "opportunistic'' in its pursuit of top-level help for the title-hungry Luka Doncic. Part of that "opportunity,'' as Mavs owner Mark Cuban has told DBcom many times, means a willingness to pay the necessary price while also taking advantage of another team's unfortunate situation.

Why A Buddy Hield NBA Draft Trade Makes Mavs Sense

From our Dalton Trigg:

If Tim Hardaway Jr. decides to opt in to his $19 million player option, Dallas could, in theory, send his expiring contract, a filler player (perhaps Delon Wright or Justin Jackson), and the No. 31 pick in this year's draft to Sacramento for Hield, whose four-year extension will kick in this offseason. There's a couple of other ways you could mix and match the pieces, but that's probably the most realistic scenario in our opinion.

Before the start of the 2019-20 season, Hield signed a four-year, $94 million extension with the Kings. In some ways, he played up to that contract, having averaged 19.2 points, 4.6 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game in 2019-20 while shooting 42.9 percent from the field and 39.4 percent from beyond the arc.

It's easy to imagine how Hield's numbers as a shooter would bloat in coach Rick Carlisle's offense in Dallas while he plays alongside Doncic. ... and it's weird to think of Hield as not being good enough to start for a non-playoff team in Sacramento.

The Kings are making changes in the front office and surely they'll prefer to salvage this sour situation. But while they struggle to even get Hield on the phone, somebody should cause them to have to answer Line 2, with the Mavs on the other end of the call.