Buddy Hield has played 11 NBA seasons and suited up for seven franchises. Two of those stops happened in the same week.
The Hornets acquired Hield on Sept. 22 and shipped him out on Sept. 26. Four days. He never played a game for Charlotte, and by the time the second deal was reported he was a Chicago Bull.
Trade One: Atlanta to Charlotte
On Sept. 22, the Hawks sent Hield and guard Ryan Nembhard to the Hornets for Dorian Finney-Smith. Atlanta wanted the bigger wing. Charlotte absorbed Hield’s expiring $9.6 million salary as the price of getting a young guard attached to it.
Hield had already been moved once in 2026, going from Golden State to Atlanta at the February deadline. He averaged 7.6 points in 51 games between the two teams last season, the quietest year of his career by a wide margin.
Trade Two: Charlotte to Chicago
Four days later the Hornets flipped him again, sending Hield and cash to the Bulls for Rob Dillingham. The move opened a $9.6 million trade exception for Charlotte and shaved roughly $3 million off the payroll.
That is the actual purpose of the deal for the Hornets. Dillingham was the No. 8 pick in the 2024 draft, he turns 22 in January, and he costs less than Hield. He is also on his third team since February, having gone from Minnesota to Chicago in the Ayo Dosunmu trade and now to Charlotte. Given the Hornets’ roster crunch, there is no guarantee he sticks.
Does Chicago Get Anything Out of This?
Some, but not much. Hield is 33 and a career 39.5 percent three-point shooter on 7.3 attempts per game, and that is the entire pitch. The Bulls went 31-51, hired executive vice president Bryson Graham in May and head coach Tiago Splitter in June, and drafted Caleb Wilson. Spacing around Wilson and Matas Buzelis is a real need.
Hield does not fix Chicago. He widens the floor for two young forwards who need driving lanes, and his expiring contract is a small piece of deadline flexibility. The Bulls also signed Norman Powell this offseason, so the shooting hole was already being patched.
Charlotte Won This One
The Hornets went 44-38 last season, their first winning record since 2021-22, and lost to Orlando in the playoffs. They turned a veteran they did not need into cap relief plus a lottery-pick reclamation project, and they did it in under a week.
Chicago got a 33-year-old shooter and a salary. For a team with nothing to lose that is a defensible use of a roster spot, but nobody should mistake it for progress. The honest description is that two teams going in different directions swapped spare parts, and the rebuilding one came away with the piece that could still become something.
As for Hield, he keeps cashing checks and keeps packing. Seven teams in 11 years, two of them inside four days, and he still has not played a minute for one of them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.