Philadelphia 76ers: The dreams of a Buddy Hield trade are (probably) dead

Philadelphia 76ers fans, do dreams ever really die?

For the better part of a year, an offseason trade between the Philadelphia 76ers and Sacramento Kings centered around Al Horford and Buddy Hield didn’t just seem like a possibility: It felt like an inevitability.

Is that a tad presumptuous and an almost guaranteed let down a bit down the line? In hindsight, you’d best believe it, but back in February, it was exciting.

The Sixers were bad, the trade deadline had passed, and the only ‘reinforcements’ Elton Brand was able to scrounge up were a pair of Golden State Warriors on one-year, vet minimum deals. No hate on either Alec Burks or Glenn Robinson, but neither is the sort of knockdown, generational shooter many desperately craved to pair with Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid with moving forward.

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Buddy Hield, by contrast, was the perfect player at the perfect time.

After signing a lucrative four-year, $94 million extension to stick with his second NBA team for the foreseeable future, Hield was unceremoniously benched by new head coach Luke Walton in favor of then-27-year-old Serbian winger Bogdan Bogdanović. Hield understandably wasn’t particularly jazzed with the prospects of spending his prime coming off the bench and began a bit of a passive-aggressive war against his team.

Factor in the assumption that Bogdanović would all but surely be handed an extension when the season came to an end and the idea of moving off of Hield for a better-fitting piece made a lot of sense for Vlade Divac and his, um, creative approach to team building.

But then life happened.

First, after a confusingly long tenure in California’s capitol, the Kings decided to kick Divac to the curb once and for all, in a move that the rest of the league’s decisionmakers all but surely poured one out over.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the dynamic duo of Shams and Woj – the NBA’s equivalent of Batman and Captain America – broke the news that the Kings were executing a sign-and-trade with the Bucks to ship Bogdanović (and Justin James) to Milwaukee for Donte DiVincenzo, D.J. Wilson, and Ersan Ilyasova.

In theory, this deal could be completely independent of anything else. Maybe new GM Monte McNair is a massive fan of Villanova’s favorite red-headed child and genuinely believes him to be the perfect backcourt partner for De’Aaron Fox moving forward. If that’s the case, then good for the Kings, they exchanged a 28-year-old who seems pretty capped out as a good-but-not-great starter for a 23-year-old with two more years on his rookie contract.

But objectively speaking, moving on from Bogdanović likely means the Kings want to 1. save money and 2. reinsert Hield into the starting five.

Which means *drum roll* reports of Hield being off the block are likely true.

The dream is dashed, dead, and potentially done… at least until the trade deadline rolls around and the Kings have single-digit wins. Which is unfortunate, because the Philadelphia 76ers in all likelihood won’t be heavy players at the trade deadline.

Assuming Daryl Morey and company don’t go full-on wait mode and #Runitback with a team that couldn’t even steal a game against the Boston Celtics in the first round, the Sixers will in all likelihood blow a solid portion of their war chest on some sort of asset that will all but surely polarize the fanbase. That means no blockbuster midseason trade, no 3 am Tobias Harris move and a future of reinforcements similar to 2019’s lackluster haul.

Then again, maybe other rumors are true and the Kings are looking to thoroughly blow things up and pull off a Process of their own. If that’s the case, maybe Hield is still on the market after all and Morey just had to wait for McNair to finish off the Bogdanović business before he can turn his attention to Hield. I know I hate doing big, $100 million deals after midnight.

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The worst part of being a fan of any professional sports team is the passive nature of fandom. Sure, you can interact with a team, buy their gear, and even earn perfect attendance watching games from the comfort of your own home, but you’ll never be able to substantively impact the product on the court one way or another outside of a game of 2K. If a deal to acquire Buddy Hield does materialize, especially if it includes Al Horford, then great, talk about a Woj Bomb to end all Woj Bombs, but if not, the trade an entire B-level sports market collectively attempted to will into existence will fade into a fond memory of whatever this weird, post-The Process-era of Philadelphia 76ers basketball will inevitably be called. Spoiler alert: It probably won’t be ‘The Buddy Hield-era’.