Detroit Pistons: Andre Drummond an underrated star

He’s not your traditional NBA star, but Andre Drummond’s play at both ends has been a big reason for the Detroit Piston’s success this season.

Since entering the league back in 2012, Andre Drummond has never been your prototypical star-level player. He’s got a limited offensive repertoire who has over half of his baskets assisted on. The former Uconn Huskie has never averaged over 20 points per game in a single season and his range is limited to within a few feet of the basket.

Once he arrived in January of 2018, it was Blake Griffin who became the de-facto franchise leader of the Detroit Pistons. The once No. 1 overall pick and perennial All-Star’s game is much better suited to lead a team, and it’s that skill set that shoved him into the spotlight, forcing Drummond to take a backseat.

Because of his ability to score the basketball, Griffin has been the driving force in Detroit’s push towards the postseason, but what Drummond is doing this season is nothing short of elite, and yet little to nobody is talking about it because of his role within the Pistons, until now.

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Drummond has always been one of the best rebounders in the game, and the 2018-19 season is no exception. The two-time All-Star is currently averaging a league-leading 15.5 boards per game, including a ridiculous 5.3 on the offensive end.

That type of fight and determination on the less heralded side of the glass has him inside the top-20 all-time for the most offensive rebounds per game in a single season for the third time in his career, grouping him together with some of the NBA’s greatest in that category such as Moses Malone and Dennis Rodman.

He’s got the third lowest individual defensive rating in the league at 100.5 behind only the reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert and the frontrunner for the MPV award in Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Drummond ranks 12th in steals per game and ninth in blocks per game. He’s not a great individual stopper, allowing opponents to shoot 63.0 percent within five feet of the rim, but it’s clear that he’s providing immense energy at that end of the floor, enough to help Detroit allow the seventh-fewest points per game in the league.

On the offensive end, he doesn’t exactly fit the mold of a modern center ala Karl-Anthony Towns or Joel Embiid, but at roughly 279 pounds he knows how to throw his weight around and create looks from himself either cutting to the basket or getting the ball off the glass, ranking fifth and first in possessions per game among those categories respectively.

He’s averaging a career-high 17.3 points per game and continues to show improvement at the free-throw line, where he’s hovered around 60 percent since last season after converting on only 38.1 percent of his looks in his first five seasons combined.

So much of the modern NBA media is spent discussing seven-footers with guard-like skills or the lanky athletes who control the interior with their ability to block seemingly every shot that comes their way.

As more of commanding energy-draining presence exclusively near the bucket, Drummond doesn’t really fall into either of those categories and yet he still finds ways to impact the outcome of any given game by outworking opponents to get what he feels is rightfully his.

He’ll likely never get the recognition he truly deserves due to his relatively unattractive and old-fashioned style of play, but in his field of expertise, Andre Drummond is playing like the best of the best, and as the dominance continues moving forward, maybe there’s a chance the rest of the NBA world will open their eyes and see it too.