Detroit Pistons: Rajon Rondo Pursuit Not Worth Andre Drummond
By Phil Watson
Second-year big man Andre Drummond is too valuable a piece for the Detroit Pistons to squander in pursuit of All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo. Photo Credit: mariselise Flickr.com
The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn reported Sunday that the Detroit Pistons are very interested in Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, but that the Celtics are not interested in the Pistons’ offer of guard Brandon Knight and one of their expiring contracts.
The Pistons trade options are limited because they can’t offer a first-round draft pick. Those picks are in limbo because the Charlotte Bobcats retain the rights to choose one of the Pistons’ first rounders over the next four seasons as a result of the trade that sent Ben Gordon to Charlotte.
The expiring contracts Detroit has to work with include Charlie Villanueva ($8.5 million due in 2013-14), Rodney Stuckey ($8.5 million) and Vyacheslav Kravtsov ($1.5 million).
Knight is still on his rookie deal and is due a shade more than $2.9 million this season with a $3.75 million team option for 2014-15 and a qualifying offer of just more than $5 million in 2015-16, when Knight can become a restricted free agent.
The Pistons have had point guard issues since trading Chauncey Billups to the Denver Nuggets in November 2008 and neither Knight nor Stuckey has appeared capable of being the solution to the problem.
Rondo, on the other hand, is the prototypical pass-first point guard the Pistons haven’t had since Kevin Porter was in Detroit in the 1970s. In his seven-year NBA career, Rondo is averaging 11.1 points and 8.3 assists per game and has averaged double-figure assists in each of the last three seasons (11.2 in 2010-10 and league-leading marks of 11.7 and 11.1 each of the last two years).
But Rondo is 27 and coming off an ACL injury, so that damages his value somewhat. He does, however, have two years remaining on a very team-friendly contract (a shade less than $12 million due this season and just less than $13 million in 2014-15).
Washburn theorizes that the Celtics’ starting price for doing business on a Rondo deal would be second-year center Andre Drummond and that should be a deal-breaker for Pistons general manager Joe Dumars.
Drummond was dynamic at times as a rookie, despite missing 22 games with back problems. He averaged 7.9 points, 7.6 rebounds and 1.6 blocked shots per game in just 20.7 minutes, projecting to per-36 totals of 13.8 points, 13.2 boards and 2.8 blocks. His player efficiency rating was an extremely good 21.6 and he had a defensive rating of 99 (points allowed per 100 possessions).
And he won’t be 20 years old until next month.
Drummond was a standout in the Orlando Summer League last week, leading the 10-team circuit in rebounding at 15 per game. He also averaged 15.5 points, 2.5 steals and two blocks per game in the four games he played, while shooting 51.9 percent from the floor.
The free-throw line continued to be a problem as he was just 6-for-18 (33.3 percent), coming off a regular season during which he was just a 37.1 percent free-throw shooter (59-for-159). Had he qualified for the league lead in FT shooting, he would have been the worst in the league, a whopping 12.1 percent worse than Dwight Howard, who was the only sub-50 percent shooter in the NBA among qualifiers at 49.2 percent (355-for-721).
But Drummond showed some terrific basketball ability in the summer league, particularly in this sequence against the Miami Heat on July 11:
Rajon Rondo would be a terrific addition to the Pistons; the point guard the franchise hasn’t had since Billups was shipped out. But if the price of obtaining him includes parting with the young Drummond, then it’s too high a price to pay.