Detroit Pistons: Andre Drummond On Schedule For Breakout Year
By Phil Watson
The Detroit Pistons come into the 2013-14 season with the idea of going big up front.
Check that – the Pistons are going huge.
Incumbent center Greg Monroe—all 6’11” and 250 pounds of him—is sliding over to the 4 this season. Free-agent addition Josh Smith, who played a lot of 4 during his eight years with the Atlanta Hawks, is moving out onto the wing at the 3 at 6’9” and 225 pounds.
The man in the middle will be second-year man Andre Drummond, a 20-year-old man-child at 6’10” and 270 pounds.
Drummond flashed a lot of pure athleticism as a rookie in 2012-13, as evidenced by this montage of his top 10 plays from last season:
He also put up some ridiculous per-36 minutes numbers: 13.8 points, 13.2 rebounds, 1.7 steals and a whopping 2.8 blocked shots, a figure that would have been just behind the league-leading 3.0 posted by Serge Ibaka of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
His player efficiency rating in 20.7 minutes per game was also massive, 21.6 (15 is considered average), and he shot 60.8 percent from the floor. But of his 347 shots, 271 of them were at the rim and another 34 were from three to nine feet.
At the rim, Drummond was a 72 percent shooter (195-for-271). He was 9-for-34 (26.5 percent) from three to nine feet, 0-for-6 from 10 to 15 feet and 4-for-13 from 16 to 23 feet out. He was 1-for-2 from 3-point range (per hoopdata.com).
And his free-throw shooting was laughably bad.
Yes, two straight airballs is embarrassing. But it didn’t get much better the rest of the season, either. Drummond was 59-for-159 from the stripe in 2012-13, 37.1 percent. For a big, athletic center who is going to bully his way around in the paint, Drummond just has to be better at converting those fouls into points.
Drummond capped his eight-game preseason run on Thursday night with 11 points and a whopping 20 rebounds in 38 minutes against the Minnesota Timberwolves—with eight of those boards coming on the offensive glass.
For the preseason, Drummond averaged 30.4 minutes a game and put up solid numbers—12.5 points, 12 rebounds, 1.9 blocks—while shooting 55.3 percent (42-for-76).
Even his free-throw shooting got marginally better. Drummond missed two of his three attempts Thursday night, but finished the preseason on the right side of the break-even mark, hitting 16-of-30 (53.3 percent).
Is that acceptable? No and it’s certainly not anywhere close to good. But compared to 37.1 percent, it’s downright Steve Nash-esque.
One big concern for Drummond is that he’s still raw and very inexperienced. As a result, he’s prone to foul problems. In seven preseason games against NBA competition (throwing out the game against Maccabi Haifa on Oct. 8), Drummond three fouls in four games, four in another and five twice.
Detroit has the front court depth to survive if Drummond gets into foul trouble, but it’s not the same ballclub without his dynamic athleticism on the defensive end, in particular.
Still, the club will take a double-double average from its 20-year-old.
Especially because there is still so much obvious room for improvement from a kid who is just starting to scratch the surface of what he’s capable of becoming in the NBA.