Detroit Pistons: No Underhanded Free Throws For Andre Drummond

Andre Drummond did some amazing things as a rookie for the Detroit Pistons last season. Despite averaging less than 21 minutes per game, Drummond averaged 7.9 points, 7.6 rebounds, 1.6 blocked shots and one steal per game.

Spread that over 36 minutes (small sample size alert!) and that’s 13.8 points, 13.2 boards, 2.8 blocks and 1.7 steals.

He had a player efficiency rating of 21.6 (again though, with small minutes totals, PER can be thrown off a bit), an offensive rating of 114 and a defensive rating of 99 (both ratings predicated on points scored or allowed per 100 possessions). Despite the limited playing time, Drummond had 4.5 win shares, which was second on the team behind Greg Monroe (5.9).

But then … there was this:

Andre Drummond’s free-throw shooting was nearly historically awful. Fortunately for Drummond, however, he was so bad at the line that he didn’t come close to making the required 125 free throws to qualify for the league leaderboard. If he had, that 37.1 percent mark (59-for-159) would have put him slightly behind the 354-for-932 monstrosity from the line that was the 1967-68 season for Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers, a 38 percent clip that is, officially, the worst free-throw shooting season on record in the NBA.

On Friday, ESPN Truehoop writer Ethan Sherwood Strauss implored Drummond to shoot his free throws … underhanded. Understand, no one has done this in the NBA since Rick Barry retired in 1980. Then again, Rick Barry was an 89.3 percent career free-throw shooter in 14 seasons in the NBA and ABA, so maybe this video would be inspiring.

Alas, Drummond tweeted over the weekend that his decision on free-throw shooting style was final.

Earlier this month, Pistons front-office boss Joe Dumars told Grantland.com’s Zach Lowe that Drummond’s free-throw shooting form is fine, he just needs to pick a routine and stay with it.

“His form is good,” Dumars said. “He doesn’t have bad form. … For a kid like Dre, what we talk about is making sure you shoot with the same form every time—that repetition—and then having a routine. You can’t get there and dribble three times, one time, four times, two times. You have to get a solid routine every time you step to the line.

“I joked with him, ‘Hey, Dre, this is probably not the time to be searching for a routine. You probably want to do that in the offseason, man.’ Just get a routine, whatever it is.”

The thing about Drummond’s 37.1 percent mark at the line was that it was a quantum leap forward from his lone season at the University of Connecticut, when he was 26-for-88 in 2011-12 for the Huskies—29.5 percent.

So at this rate of improvement, he’ll be knocking ‘em up down like Rick Barry … sometime around the 2028-29 season.