Detroit Pistons: Andre Drummond is finally coming to life

Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond is surging like his team, and it’s coming at just the right time for their playoff push.

It took Andre Drummond of the Detroit Pistons roughly two-thirds of the season to start performing up to his contract, but he is finally hitting his stride. Similar to Reggie Jackson‘s recent improvements, the team is improving right alongside him.

Drummond’s recent string of games has been some of the best in the NBA among centers. In fact, it’s featured some of the absolute best of his career. Over his last 12 games, he’s averaged 22.4 points, 16.0 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game.

His 3-point shooting was expected to be his big development coming into the season, but that hasn’t translated. Thankfully for him, he is making up for it with his effectiveness inside. Among players with at least 100 shot attempts in the last 15 games, he’s shooting the second-best percentage (65.7 percent) in the NBA, trailing only Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz (66.4 percent). With Blake Griffin, Jackson and the team’s other shooters, there is a good amount of room for him to do that damage.

Drummond has always been a great rebounder, and that remains true during this recent stretch. He ranks fourth in the NBA in defensive rebounding percentage among qualified players. He’s been even better on the offensive end, as he’s No. 1 in offensive rebounding percentage. Only Hassan Whiteside of the Miami Heat ranks in the top five in both metrics during that same stretch.

Some people look at the raw numbers to determine how good of a rebounder a player is, but, even if Drummond weren’t leading the NBA in rebounds again, he has a tremendous impact on the team’s raw rebounding numbers. The Pistons are third in the league this season in defensive rebounding percentage due to the work he puts in on that end of the floor.

When the season started, Drummond, Jackson and Griffin were supposed to be the team’s Big 3, but Drummond hadn’t pulled his weight for much of the year in that aspect. He’s finally changed that, and the team is surging appropriately as a result.

The Pistons are fighting to earn the sixth overall seed in the Eastern Conference. There are five teams within 4.5 games of each other in the East, and the Pistons are pushing to get that 6-seed, currently sitting 1.5 games behind the Brooklyn Nets.

Teams that could end up with the third seed, such as the Philadelphia 76ers, Indiana Pacers or Boston Celtics, are likely to allow the Pistons to run their double-big lineups that get their best lineups on the floor. If Drummond is unable to sustain this level of play, they will likely end up with the seventh or eighth seed, which could make them cannon fodder for the teams that end up with the top two teams.

Drummond isn’t considered among the top centers like Rudy Gobert and Joel Embiid when those conversations are had, but it’s the stretches of play like this that could push him into that conversation.

The Pistons aren’t an overly deep team in the frontcourt, and they need Andre Drummond to play like this to push for their ceiling. If he keeps this up, they could push for the sixth seed and actually make some noise when the playoffs start.