Let's be honest, things have been a bit stagnant lately. With the league enjoying a final respite before the season kicks off, starving NBA fans have had to subsist on the morsels of Exhibit-10 signings and overcooked reports about "Dame to Miami."

Well I hope you didn't get used to glassy waters, because weather is on the horizon. Shams broke the doldrums today by announcing that the Pacers and Buddy Hield have failed to agree to an extension and will begin seeking a trade for the Bahamian sharpshooter.

The Pacers roster is mid-metamorphosis. Like a cocoon with a colorful wing sticking out, it offers glimpses of beauty though the final form is still shrouded in mystery. As I see it, I can take this cocoon analogy one of two ways:

1) The cocoon can represent the veterans who need to make way for their younger counterparts, or...

2) The cocoon can represent the one-dimensional players that forced the team to sell-out offensively at expense of any semblance of defense or rebounding last year.

Either way, Buddy meets the criteria. Still, like any good cocoon, Buddy also represents safety. The symbiotic relationship between him and the brain of that beautiful butterfly to be, Tyrese Haliburton, is not to be discounted.

To Haliburton, Hield is more than a floor spacer, he's his right hand. Just under a quarter of Haliburton's assists went to Hield in '22-'23. Conversely, nearly a third of Hield's made shots were assisted by Haliburton. Their chemistry, which dates back to Sacramento, is apparent whenever they share the floor. Whether Hield is sprinting to make himself available for a quick outlet, darting off a teammate's screen, or ghosting his own, Haliburton is always ready to deliver the ball to Buddy's shooting pocket. Need more evidence of their mutual reliance? Look no further than their on/off numbers:

As I wrote in his season review article, Buddy was integral to whatever success the team had last year. He was a part of four of the team's five lineups with a positive points-per-possession differential, with the team performing 6.6 points better with him on the court than with him off of it. That was the best differential on the team among regular rotation players (0.5 better than Haliburton).

Despite all of those reasons to keep Buddy, this news doesn't exactly come as a surprise. When asked about whether the team would extend Hield this offseason, Pritchard replied as follows:

I love Buddy. There's some things that he does that's not on the court. The way he keeps practice light. But I think we've got to define his role next year... And if we can get a role where he's comfortable and we're comfortable, then I'm not opposed to [extending him].

According to Shams, the extension offered by the Pacers did not make Buddy "feel desired." As we've seen in past negotiations, most recently with Domas and Myles, things are fluid. Similar to Myles, the Pacers could use the remaining space on the cap sheet to inflate Hield's salary this year and drop it down to a more team-friendly rate going forward.

But, like Pritchard's quote suggests, the disconnect likely has less to do with dollars and cents and more to do with role. Seemingly, the Pacers have decided that Mathurin's development requires a place in the starting lineup, regardless of fit. If that speculation is correct, it will be interesting to track when the brass decides to prioritize development and when it decides to prioritize wins. We could see that confrontation play out to different results at the backup point guard and the power forward positions.

Since we love nothing more than rosterbation, I'll leave you with a hypothetical. If Buddy does get traded, what do you want in return?

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