Who Is Better: Buddy Hield or Terence Davis?

Who is better: Buddy Hield or Terence Davis

  • Buddy Hield by a lot

  • Buddy Hield

  • Buddy Hield by a little

  • They're about the same

  • Terence Davis by a little

  • Terence Davis

  • Terence Davis by a lot

Results are only viewable after voting.
twslam07

twslam07

All-Star
Part of the reason why I've been looking to move Hield in some deals recently is that I think Davis is able to fill those minutes effectively, and maybe even be more impactful than Hield with those minutes.

Below are the advanced impact stats for both players this season:

1642968906556.png

These generally indicate that Davis is better on defense and Hield is better on offense, but blending both offense & defense together, Davis has the edge (and quite substantially) when considering both offense and defense. However, Davis' offense stats are likely dragged down from his slow start to the season. Below are per36 min stats for Davis & Hield split by Oct-Nov and Dec-Jan:

1642969453482.png

Per 36 min from Dec-Jan, Davis has been averaging 24.4 PPG on a .620 TS%. He's been knocking down his 3s at a 40% clip while taking around 10 3s per game. He's also been averaging a little over 3 assists per game with a 1.5 AST:TO ratio. Lastly, he's been grabbing almost 7 boards a game, 1.9 steals per game, and 0.7 blocker per game.

If he's able to consistently put up a portion of the offensive production we've seen from Dec-Jan, he's not only competitive with Hield on offense but he'd be quite the 24 year old, two way player for us.



So with this in mind, who do you think is better?
 
Yeah, I don't think there's been any comparison since Davis has turned it on from those Clippers games back in December. He's more athletic, he's more active just straight better on defense. And while he doesn't Buddy's track record of high volume 3pt shooting, I don't see any reason he wouldn't be 36-37% in a starter/big minute role and he actually has on-ball shot creation ability that Buddy does not.

He's getting closer to rookie Terrence Davis that made the all-rookie 2nd team that was impactful on both ends.
 
I don’t even need to look at the data…Davis is better. Sure, Hield is probably the better shooter but there is no comparison defensively, like at all.

Furthermore, Hield doesn’t give a rats ass about the team while Davis looks to be invested emotionally in the team. Hield is soft as all get up while Davis has a toughness about him this team sorely needs.
 
I voted TD by a little. I’ll need more than a month of consistency, but, he’s clearly the smarter player by miles. I’d hate to see Buddy’s shooting ability leave our squad but it’s time for him to go because he literally does nothing else well enough to warrant that contract.
 
I think that Buddy is the better player by at least a little, simply because he has an elite NBA skill: greater than .400 3PT% career on huge volume. The numbers above argue strongly for Davis, but don't take into account that we're looking at a pretty lousy season for Buddy - probably largely influenced by the fact that Buddy doesn't want to be in Sacramento anymore.

TD is of course younger, and cheaper, and he puts out better effort and better defense. By just the straight criteria - who is the better player - I think it's Buddy. But I'm increasingly coming into the belief that overall the Kings would be better off if they could trade Buddy and his elite skill for a useful player and let TD take over. This, however, does kind of depend on the makeup of the team - if the Kings manage to trade for Simmons then spacing the floor is going to be very important and TD may not be reliable enough from three to open up the paint.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
I feel like the very best of Hield is slightly better than the very best of Davis, but Davis is a better all-around player, with a lower ceiling, but a higher floor.
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I've seen Davis heat up in a way that has been missing from Buddy's game as of late. Davis, at 5 years younger and a notably better defender, would be someone I would invest more of my time in, because even when the shots aren't falling, he can impact the game a little more than Buddy at this stage.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
I think that Buddy is the better player by at least a little, simply because he has an elite NBA skill: greater than .400 3PT% career on huge volume. The numbers above argue strongly for Davis, but don't take into account that we're looking at a pretty lousy season for Buddy - probably largely influenced by the fact that Buddy doesn't want to be in Sacramento anymore.

TD is of course younger, and cheaper, and he puts out better effort and better defense. By just the straight criteria - who is the better player - I think it's Buddy. But I'm increasingly coming into the belief that overall the Kings would be better off if they could trade Buddy and his elite skill for a useful player and let TD take over. This, however, does kind of depend on the makeup of the team - if the Kings manage to trade for Simmons then spacing the floor is going to be very important and TD may not be reliable enough from three to open up the paint.
Click to expand...
What he said.
 
Straight up comparison I think Buddy is the overall better player. Teams aren't focusing on TD the way they do on Buddy, and TD's defense is pretty overrated IMO. TD definitely a better 1 on 1 player and can create off the dribble better, so I think it depends what sort of role you're looking to fill. He is young though, and there's good reason to be high on him.
 
Who is better just as a player and in terms of value relative to the game played today? Buddy. By a decent margin in fact. But, the clothes are dirty when it comes to him. A great, expensive shirt with a big fat ugly stain on it is still not going to be something you wear to the gala. They Kings made this ugly and didn't clean that mess even if it meant less value coming back. That's on them. TD looking decent and playing hard by itself is a positive that would make it easier to move Buddy. But, when Buddy is gone? People will go back to the classic Kings thing of wondering why so and so didn't play like that here? It was never them, it was always the "here" that was the issue.
 
On a champion-caliber team, TD at his peak feels like a Bobby Jackson type of sparkle coming off and giving you full effort on both ends, whereas Buddy at his peak would surely be on the starting lineup or a crucial 6th-man.

Capt. Factorial said:
I think that Buddy is the better player by at least a little, simply because he has an elite NBA skill: greater than .400 3PT% career on huge volume. The numbers above argue strongly for Davis, but don't take into account that we're looking at a pretty lousy season for Buddy - probably largely influenced by the fact that Buddy doesn't want to be in Sacramento anymore.
Click to expand...
I also want to point out that, Buddy had been exerting a lot more energy on help defense and had many good moments. But I can see where the overwhelming number pointing at TD being better (myself included) coming from. TD just seems to understand defense a little more from the get-go, not to say he's a lockdown defender like Davion is going to be (if he isn't already), but compare to Buddy, TD not only gives you consistent effort but seems to channel his energy in D more positively where Buddy feels like someone who wants to help so badly yet not know the proper way to do it. And to me, in the best of days, I'd pick TD's B grade on both ends versus Buddy's A- offense but C grade defense.

(PS: Am I alone on this? Buddy's bulked-up current self seems to contradict the way he plays nowadays. If he wanted the extra beef, you'd think he wanna do more Harden-lookalike driving to the basket, absorb the impact, and finishes And-1. Yet he seems to try to play more 3-exclusive and doing more evasive dribbling/running by big men maneuvers that one could argue a slimmer body would help? I'm slightly looking at Fox's direction for this too but that's not the subject at hand.)

Buddy in 2018:
buddy-hield-extension.jpg
 
Some nice discussion here. I think TD is probably a little better for us today than Buddy. I'm a little nervous about making a definitive statement though. While we have seen a few seasons of Buddy, in TD's first full season here he has been sometimes good and sometimes really bad. Was his early season just a bad slump or will he be consistently up and down?
 
If I have this right, Buddy's average annual salary is $23,500,00 and Terence's is $1,200,000. If their stats are really that close hopefully we can agree that Terence is a slightly better value.
 
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origkds said:
If I have this right, Buddy's average annual salary is $22,500,00 and Terence's is $1,200,000. If their stats are really that close hopefully we can agree that Terence is a slightly better value.
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Not quite. Buddy's average salary going forward including this year is about $21.2M, but since he's declining in salary if you prorate this year his remaining salary averages about $20.8M. Close, though.

Davis, on the other hand is making $4M this year and $4M next, a good deal more than your numbers. And, I suppose to be fair, we might want to estimate a third year for him (since Buddy has one more year of control). But I won't try to guess what he'll make in the summer of 2023.

But is Davis currently a relative bargain compared to Buddy? Yes.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Not quite. Buddy's average salary going forward including this year is about $21.2M, but since he's declining in salary if you prorate this year his remaining salary averages about $20.8M. Close, though.

Davis, on the other hand is making $4M this year and $4M next, a good deal more than your numbers. And, I suppose to be fair, we might want to estimate a third year for him (since Buddy has one more year of control). But I won't try to guess what he'll make in the summer of 2023.

But is Davis currently a relative bargain compared to Buddy? Yes.
Click to expand...

Yeah if Davis continues on a positive trajectory becoming a quality rotation guy, my guess is he's in the $10 mil range? Which as a 26 year old, would still be fairly reasonable and you could justify that cost as a super 6th man.

That's more or less Buddy's problem. It's not that he's bad or anything, or his shooting isn't valuable, it's just hard in any sense to justify that contract. That $20 mil could fix a lot of problems on his team if it were allocated to a starting wing rather than him.
 
I think TD is the better player for this team right now. He's much more athletic and more engaged.

But it's not hard to think of a set of circumstances under which Buddy is the one you'd prefer - like good coaching, schemes, and players that knew better how to get Buddy more open looks and discipline his gunner tendencies (tendencies TD very much shares, which is annoying in both cases).

(Btw, it really is amazing that in a *down* year Buddy can shoot 38% from 3 given how much jacking he does and attention he gets, given that he can't just hoist 'em from the logo the way Dame and Curry can before the double-team gets there. The man can flat-out shoot.)

One under-appreciated part of their games: listed at 6'4," they're both very solid rebounders from the 2, w/Davis being the better of the two. They're easily the Kings' two best rebounding guards, which is really helpful on this boards-deficient squad.

Considering the age and salary differences, there's zero question who's the better value at this point. And while 24 isn't particularly young in terms of game development, I think it's fair to think that TD hasn't nearly hit his ceiling after 162 games (2 seasons' worth) and 17 mpg. W/opportunity, experience and PT he can def improve.
 
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Buddy has mentally checked out since being shopped. The shooting is in Buddy's favor but other than that, you don't get much out of him. He is an Ironman though, he hasn't missed many games in his career since being drafted. Davis has a chuckers mentality so ideally you want him to take shots that are open and available and with him being signed for two more years, he can make improvements with Rico.
 
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