SALT LAKE CITY – During a timeout in the Warriors’ preseason win over the Detroit Pistons, a meeting of basketball minds took place between assistant coach Bruce Fraser and two of the game’s greatest shooters. While Steph Curry was in a blue sweatsuit sitting out the game, Buddy Hield was lighting up the Pistons, going 4 of 6 from three in 14 minutes, and listening to every word of advice his new teammate was sharing.
“We were talking about feet,” Hield revealed Friday after Warriors shootaround ahead of their game against the Utah Jazz. “He was trying to figure out how I caught the ball and shot it, and what he’s comfortable with, what I’m comfortable with. We were talking about feet and balance.”
Curry and Hield are both elite shooters on the run. They’re weapons that can’t be stopped in transition. Automatic three points without perfect defense, and even that isn’t enough at times.
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For how much he tries to be as balanced as possible, shooting is about feel to Hield. When it comes off his right hand, he usually knows right away if the ball is going in or not.
“I’m a guy that’s about hand placement,” Hield explained. “If it comes off my hand right, I feel like it has a good chance of going in. We’ve done so much work with our bodies and we’ve already mastered that, so when guys make tough shots and people go, ‘Oh, that was a tough shot,’ I’m more like, ‘Yeah, but it came off my hand right – it felt good.’
“I’m just so used to making that shot all the time. Sometimes it’s not all about balance, but hand placement and once that ball is in the right hand placement, let it go and you know it’s going in.”
The Warriors acquired Hield via sign-and-trade as part of their massive six-team deal that saw Klay Thompson join the Dallas Mavericks. From training, throughout the preseason and in the Warriors’ blowout win over the Portland Trail Blazers, Hield has been a seamless fit in Steve Kerr’s offense.
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Hield shot 48.7 percent from 3-point range in the Warriors’ undefeated 6-0 preseason, making 19 of his 39 attempts. In his regular-season debut, Hield was unconscious coming off the bench and became an instant problem for Portland’s defense. Though he only played 15 minutes, Hield was the Warriors’ leading scorer, tallying 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting while making five of his seven threes.
Replacing a legend like Thompson is an impossible task. Hield made it clear right away that he isn’t trying to be Thompson, knowing those are shoes that never can be filled. Being himself is all he can be, and all the Warriors wanted out of him when they acquired him in the offseason.
There also might not be a better replacement than Hield. He has made 250 3-pointers five times in his career. That’s second to only Curry’s 10 times doing so. But while Curry has missed games to injury and Hield has been an Iron Man, nobody has made more 3-pointers than Hield in the last five seasons.
Hield in that span made 1,322 3-points while playing 388 games, and Curry, second to Hield, made 1,264 threes in 262 games. But the work never stops for the best of the best, and Hield already has picked up on some shooting nuances by observing Curry in person.
“He shoots the ball high,” Hield said. “He has a great arc on his ball, and that’s what I’ve been working on. I don’t like having a flat shot. Keeping arc on the ball, that’s where I realized his shot is pure. He has a unique arc, and it’s fluid.
“He’s been working on it his whole life, so I’m trying to keep arc on my ball.”
Before becoming Warriors teammates, Curry and Hield had played each other 15 times with Golden State getting the better of Hield’s teams in 13 games. Hield says he didn’t seek advice from Curry, just talking a little about keeping his shot from going too far left or right during the 3-Point Contest.
Whether it was his four years at Oklahoma, or playing for the New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers, Hield always was watching Curry from afar.
“I studied the hell out of him, though,” Hield said. “I watched all his highlights. I watched all his games. Whenever he was playing, I'm that guy that was like, 'Yo, I got to watch him play.'
“The way that he moves without the ball and the way that everyone just gravitates to him, I'm just amazed at how he figures it out."
Now the two are locker mates at Chase Center and chatting on the bus on the way to road games. All we have is a one-game sample thus far in the regular season, and even that showed Hield’s history behind the 3-point line and picking up tips from Curry can have defenses huffing, puffing and begging for help.