NBA: Is this Andre Drummond’s year?
By Seth Partnow
Ever since he accepted the job as the coach and general manager of the Detroit Pistons, every move Stan Van Gundy has made has seemed geared towards recreating his most succesful teams in Atlanta. Those squads were built around three-point shooting from as many positions as possible, save for the interior anchor of Dwight Howard. Howard’s dominance on both ends, especially defense helped take the Magic to the 2009 Finals. As such he was the most important building block in Van Gundy’s system.
In Detroit, Andre Drummond has been compared with Howard almost since he came into the league. A prodigious athlete, ferocious rebounder and spectacular finisher at the rim, Drummond’s talent justifies the comparison. His production has been fairly spectacular since entering the league as well, shooting almost 62% from the floor over his first two seasons, leading the NBA in offensive rebounding and overall rebounding percentage in 2013-14 and putting up player efficiency ratings of over 21 in each season. As anything above 20 is borderline all-star territory, this is a pretty special level of production.
Add in his selection to Team USA”s gold medal winning FIBA World Cup squad, and it seems assured that Drummond will be the catalyst for a return to prominence in Detroit.
Only not so fast. Drummond barely played in Spain, falling behind Mason Plumlee in the rotation (though the less said about Plumlee’s inclusion let alone his place in the rotation at this point, the better). Further, a deeper look into his production and floor time stats suggest that while he puts up his own gaudy numbers, Drummond hasn’t been especially meaningful in terms of helping the Pistons win games. For his impact to begin to match his potential this season, he has some definite areas where improvement is needed.
Become a Defensive Stopper
Despite the physical resemblance to Howard (Drummond is 6’10, 270, Dwight is listed at 6’11, 265) and some similar athletic gifts, Drummond has yet to come close to matching Howards all-world defensive peak. To this point in his career, he is arguably a net negative on defense, even accounting for his rebounding acumen. His shot blocking dropped off considerably in his second season. Despite averaging almost 12 more minutes per game, he recorded the same number of blocks. More exact measures of his rim protection indicate he was actually a slight negative as compared to the average NBA big man. Given his athletic gifts he has been surprisingly lax in contesting shots at the rim. This was seen at times in the build up to the World Cup, when opponents had much less difficulty scoring in the paint even when Drummond was on hand to contest the shot.
It was not just rim protection where he suffered. Drummond ranked 59th (out of 73) centers in ESPN’s “Defensive RPM” (a metric estimating a players’ overall defensive impact by controlling for the ability of the other 9 players on the floor). Greg Monroe, a largely indifferent defender, scored significantly better defensively om Defensive RPM. Watching Drummond, the issue is rarely one of effort. He has a tendency to be a beat slow on starting rotations, and has a tendency to assume his presence is enough to deter an offensive player rather than finishing the play.
Much of this is explainable by his youth and inexperience. In many ways, a rim protecting center is the point guard of an NBA defense, having to read the whole floor and identify where he will be needed in enough time to get there. Drummond is still getting the reps needed to develop that court vision, and now on his 4th head coach in three seasons, perhaps he has a chance to finally develop the needed vision under Van Gundy’s tutelage.
A final note on his defense, Drummond led the NBA in personal fouls last season. This is probably part of why he shows up worse than expected in many defensive measures, as fouling is generally not a good thing. Further, being so hack-happy makes it hard for him to stay on the floor for extended minutes. It’s never a good thing for the franchise superstar to regularly be limited to 25 minutes in a game due to foul difficulties. Hopefully, as his rotations become more timely, this problem will dissipate – if he gets to spots early, he no longer has to reach.
Increase Offensive Versatility
Drummond’s shooting percentage is otherworldly. But that’s largely because he literally only shoots dunks and layups. 86.8% of his field goal attempts came in the restricted area in 2013-14, second in the NBA only to DeAndre Jordan (a similarly limited offensive player.) Drummond’s shot chart tells the tale:
This lack of versatility prevents Detroit from involving Drummond much in the offense. His shots tend to come on garbageman type plays, putbacks and cuts to the basket off of teammates’ drives. Per MySynergySports, only 13.1% of Drummond’s offensive attempts involved him doing much creating by posting up or facing up. Thus, despite his lofty shooting percentage, Drummond carried a paltry Usage rate of only 16.7% (league average is 20%). Additionally, his lack of finesse or passing ability make it all around difficult for Drummond to be involved in the offense at all. Drummond created assist chances for teammate shots on fewer than 1 in 50 offensive possessions he played, the lowest mark of any player in the league.
While Howard has some of his own foibles as an offensive creator, at least in his Orlando days, he was more than good enough on a creator to required double teams which opened his floormates for the barrage of threes they sought to unleash. If Drummond can add just a little more ability to catch the ball further than 4 feet from the basket and make a play, he can start to have some of that same impact.
The elephant in the room for increasing his offensive role can’t be ignored: Drummond is a bad, awful, no good free throw shooter, hitting just over 40% for his career. If we’re calling on him to up his offensive involvement, it starts to become a bigger problem, as the more he handles the ball, the more chances he has to get fouled. Further, the freedom to make extremely physical plays on the ball possibly leads to turnovers and hurts his shooting percentage (yes, it could be even higher, it’s no coincidence Tyson Chandler’s shooting percentage entered the mid to high 60s at the same time he increased his free throw shooting from the mid 50s to the high 60s/low 70s) due to plays he’s knocked off balance with no call forthcoming.
This is a stickier issue, as there have been very few cases of a free throw shooter as bad as Drummond even becoming decent, let alone good or reliable from the line. Even Karl Malone (who shot under 50% his first year) improved enough to no longer be a liability by his sophomore campaign, and finished his career shooting 74% from the stripe. Even Howard, notorious for his own poor free throw shooting, hit at just under 60% in his best Orlando seasons. The gap between 40% and 60% is substantial both in terms of desire to get fouled (Howard draws almost 2.5 times as many fouls as does Drummond on a per minute basis), and the benefit to his team. To put it another way, a 60% free throw shooter getting fouled every time down the court would result in the best offense in the league, whereas if the same held for a 40% shooter, it would be the worst O in the NBA by a sizable margin.
Even if Drummond can’t achieve these improvements, all is not lost. There is plenty of room for a long, productive career as nothing more than a shot blocker and rim finisher. But for Detroit to really be able to build around him, these areas will have to improve. If signs of this growth aren’t evident at least by the end of this coming season, it might be time for Pistons fans to prepare to move on to plan B in terms of finding their centerpiece player.
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