(EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to my good friend Sharon “The General” Storr, a basketball legend in The Bahamas, for alerting me to this wonderful story on Buddy Hield. Please click on the link in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE to read the full story.)
SACRAMENTO — As a tween growing up in Freeport, on the island of Grand Bahama, Sacramento Kings shooting guard Buddy Hield used to slink out of the house whenever his overworked mom fell asleep so that he could sneak in a few extra nighttime minutes at the local basketball courts. As a high schooler living at Sunrise Christian Academy, a boarding school outside Wichita, Kansas, where he had been recruited, Hield spent so much time shooting hoops that his coach, Kyle Lindsted, later said that the only way to force the kid to take a break was to physically lock up all the basketballs.
When Hield got to the University of Oklahoma, where he played for four seasons and received four major national player of the year awards, he and his teammate and roommate Isaiah Cousins grew so committed to beating one another to the practice courts in the wee hours of the morning that Cousins, seeking any edge over the indefatigable Hield, occasionally resorted to straight-up sleeping at the gym. And after the New Orleans Pelicans drafted Hield sixth overall in 2016, the team had to break it to their rookie that his collegiate habit of spending entire days inside the arena would probably not withstand the rigors of an 82-game pro season. https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/11/29/18117412/sacramento-kings-buddy-hield?fbclid=IwAR3I25-HcYfZFnVH3tXjKRvX6tweuJwyfsXUVLhr875RINDeckR936qil8o
