Buddy Hield was traded again on Saturday, and the speed of the move is what makes it stand out.
ESPN reported that Chicago is sending guard Rob Dillingham to the Hornets for Hield and cash, a transaction that arrived just four days after Hield had already been included in another reported swap. In a late-offseason stretch built around final roster tweaks, Hield has become the kind of player who can appear in one deal, then another, before the first one has even settled.
That sequence matters because the reported path is not a straight line. Hield was included in a Hornets-Hawks swap on Tuesday, then surfaced again in the Bulls-Hornets deal on Saturday. The overlap is the story: one veteran shooter moving through multiple reported transactions in less than a week, with teams reshuffling around him as the offseason clock keeps ticking.
For Chicago, the move brings in a 33-year-old veteran entering his 11th NBA season, a former No. 6 overall pick and the NBA’s Three-Point Contest champion in 2020. Hield also carries a player option worth roughly $10 million for the 2027-28 season, which gives the deal a longer tail than a simple one-year rental.
The Bulls are getting the version of Hield that has still been valued around the league even as his recent production has dipped. He averaged 7.6 points while making 1.5 3-pointers on 34.9 percent shooting from beyond the arc across 51 games with the Warriors and Hawks last season. He started the year in Golden State, then was traded to Atlanta in February as part of the Kristaps Porzingis deal, and played only seven games for the Hawks before being moved again to Charlotte earlier this month.
That’s the backdrop for Saturday’s trade: a player with a long track record as a shooter, but one who has been in motion almost constantly since February. The Hawks’ earlier deal for Hield and Jonathan Kuminga in the Porzingis trade was followed by another quick exit, and now the Bulls are the next team to take him on.
Dillingham goes the other way as a former lottery pick still early in his career. The 21-year-old was the eighth-overall pick in the 2024 draft by San Antonio, and he averaged 6.3 points and 2.2 assists on 39.6 percent shooting from the field over 65 games last season. The Hornets are getting a talented but still raw shot-creator, and the timing of the move comes after Charlotte’s earlier offseason trade of LaMelo Ball to Minnesota.
For Chicago, the appeal is straightforward enough: a veteran shooter with a defined skill set and a contract structure that stretches beyond this season. For Charlotte, the return is a younger guard with draft pedigree and room to grow. But the larger story is how quickly Hield’s name keeps reappearing in the middle of these roster rewrites, with one reported trade leading almost immediately to the next.