SALT LAKE CITY – During a timeout during the Warriors’ preseason win over the Detroit Pistons, a meeting of basketball minds took place between assistant coach Bruce Fraser and two of the game’s best shooters. While Steph Curry sat out the game in a blue tracksuit, Buddy Hield lit up the Pistons, going 4 of 6 from three in 14 minutes, listening to every word of advice his new teammate shared.

“We were talking about feet,” Hield revealed Friday after the Warriors took a shootaround ahead of their game against the Utah Jazz. “He was trying to figure out how I caught and shot the ball, and what he’s comfortable with, what I’m comfortable with. We talked about feet and balance.”

Curry and Hield are both elite shooters on the run. They are weapons that cannot be stopped during the transition. Automatic three points without perfect defense, and even that is sometimes not enough.

As much as he tries to be as balanced as possible, Hield’s shooting is all about feel. When the ball comes from his right hand, he usually knows immediately whether the ball goes in or not.

“I’m a person who likes hand placement,” Hield explained. “If it comes out of my hand well, I feel like it has a good chance of going in.” We’ve done so much work with our bodies and we’ve already mastered that, so when guys hit hard shots and people say, ‘Oh, that was a tough shot.’ I’m more like, ‘Yes, but it came out of my hand well – it felt good.’

“I’m just so used to taking that photo all the time. Sometimes it’s not just about balance, but about hand placement. Once the ball is placed in the right hand, you release it and you know it’s going in.”

The Warriors acquired Hield via sign-and-trade as part of their massive six-team deal that saw Klay Thompson join the Dallas Mavericks. From practice, throughout the preseason and during the Warriors’ win over the Portland Trail Blazers, Hield fit seamlessly into Steve Kerr’s offense.

Hield shot 48.7 percent from 3-point range in the Warriors’ undefeated 6-0 preseason, making 19 of his 39 attempts. In his regular season debut, Hield came off the bench unconscious and immediately became a problem for Portland’s defense. Although he played only 15 minutes, Hield was the Warriors’ leading scorer, with 22 points on 8-for-12 shooting while making five of his seven threes.

Replacing a legend like Thompson is an impossible task. Hield made it clear right away that he’s not trying to be Thompson, knowing those are shoes that can never be filled. Being himself is all he can be, and the Warriors wanted to get the most out of him when they acquired him this offseason.

There may also be no better replacement than Hield. He has made 250 three-pointers five times in his career. That’s second only to 10 times Curry has done this. But while Curry has missed games due to injury and Hield has been an Iron Man, no one has made more three-pointers than Hield over the last five seasons.

Hield made 1,322 three-pointers during that span while playing 388 games, and Curry, second only to Hield, made 1,264 threes in 262 games. But the work never stops for the best of the best, and Hield has already picked up some shooting nuances from personally observing Curry.

“He shoots the ball high,” Hield said. “He has a great arc on his ball, and I’ve been working on that. I don’t like to shoot flat. As I kept the ball on the ball, I realized his shot was clean. He has a unique arc and it is fluid.

“He’s been working on it all his life, so I’m trying to keep control of the ball.”

Before Curry and Hield became Warriors teammates, they had played each other 15 times, with Golden State getting the better of Hield’s teams in 13 games. Hield says he didn’t ask Curry for advice, just talked about keeping his shot from going too far left or right during the three-point contest.

Whether it was his four years at Oklahoma or playing for the New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers, Hield always watched Curry from a distance.

“But I damn well studied him,” Hield said. “I watched all his highlights. I’ve seen all his matches. When he was playing, I was that guy who was like, ‘Yo, I gotta see him play.’

“The way he moves without the ball and the way everyone just gravitates towards him, I’m just amazed at how he figures it out.”

Now the two are lockermates at Chase Center, chatting on the bus on the way to road games. All we have so far is a sample from one regular season game, and even that showed Hield’s history behind the three-point line, and picking up tips from Curry could have the defense huffing, puffing, and begging for help .

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