Andre Drummond’s modern fit and place in today’s NBA

Andre Drummond has been a staple in the NBA’s trade talks up to this point, prompting a lot of discussion about his value and place in the modern game

What exactly is going on with Andre Drummond?

His counting stats – 17.3 points, 15.7 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game – are actually a bit better than his career averages. This surface-level view of a remarkably young (seriously, doesn’t it feel like Drummond’s been in the league for at least 10 years?) player’s season would seem to suggest that said player is ascending to a new level of dominance, not unusual for a player in his age range.

It’s been said that NBA players can expect to reach their peak at 27. (There are rare exceptions, obviously, like LeBron – still balling at 35.) Speaking of LeBron, his 27-year-old season coincided with the Miami Heat‘s first title run, when he definitively snatched the best-player-in-the-league mantle. Drummond is approaching that age, and the uptick in production this year presumably means that he’s well on his way to cementing his place in basketball lore.

Don’t believe what he’s doing is worthy of that lofty praise? Take a look at the NBA’s all-time leading rebounders. Drummond clocks in at 79th as of this exact moment. If he manages to play 75 games per year for another five years (he’s averaged 77 per year through his first seven seasons) at his current level, he’ll vault all the way up to 16th – just ahead of Shaq!

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Trade season effectively kicked off Dec. 15 – the first date that players who sign free-agent deals in the summer are eligible to be moved. Not long after, Drummond found himself in the middle of these trade talks when it was reported that the Atlanta Hawks were kicking the tires on potential Drummond deals.

Those talks have since died down. Atlanta reportedly balked at Detroit’s insistence that they include a first-round pick in any deal, according to The Athletic’s Sam Amick.

So what’s really at play here? If I told you there was an unnamed player who has a chance to finish as a top-10 rebounder of all time, you’d think that guy would be worth a first-round pick, at the very least, right?

There are a number of explanations for the lack of league-wide interest in a guy who has a legitimate chance to etch his name in the record books alongside some of the all-time greats. Perhaps rebounding has simply been devalued in the modern game, to the point that most teams would tell you they prefer a big who can stretch the floor and protect the paint on the other end. (Look at Jaren Jackson Jr., pulling down just 4.9 rebounds per game but shooting 41.5 percent on 3’s and blocking 1.5 shots per game.)

But last time I checked, a rebound is still the end-point of the majority of defensive possessions. While certain skills – rim-protection and switchability – are in high demand right now, there’s still a place for guys who can gobble up rebounds and limit second chances.

The more logical explanation is that we’ve watched Drummond pile up these record-setting numbers without truly impacting wins-and-losses. His teams have appeared in the playoffs just twice in seven seasons, both times squeaking in as the 8th seed. When young players flash real,  difference-making promise early in their careers, often through stellar statistical profiles, we expect them to progress along a linear curve while hitting certain checkpoints along the way, including multiple playoff appearances and a progression through the playoff rounds as the years go by.

But not every young player can be LeBron. Or Luka, for that matter.

Devin Booker is a prime example of this. He’s kind of Drummond’s west coast dopplegänger. Outstanding, never-before-seen numbers but, in Booker’s case, no playoff appearances to show for it. (This is where Drummond’s two playoff appearances can be a bit misleading, as they both came in a very weak Eastern Conference. Plant him in the West for the last seven years and there’s a high probability that he would find himself in the same place that Booker does today.)

Based on the track record of each of these franchises over the past decade, the lack of playoff appearances is more likely a symptom of general organizational ineptitude, from ownership on down. It’s difficult to overcome bad ownership, as the most meddlesome of this exclusive group can significantly hinder their team’s progress by inputting themselves into decisions and situations that are meant for the basketball people.

Even though the Blake Griffin trade did yield a playoff trip for the Detroit Pistons, the actual idea behind executing a trade like this one – picks and parts for stars – is likely the symptom of a delusional, meddling owner looking to transform his team’s fortunes through one star-level acquisition. Don’t get me wrong, Blake is a wonderful player, though a declining one when he’s on the court, which is the crux of the problem.

The timing of the Griffin trade was actually pretty curious. At the time, the Pistons sat at 22-26 -very representative of the second-half-of-the-decade Pistons. But they were fresh off an eight-game losing streak, in which they lost games to the Nets, Bulls, and Jazz by one, two and three points, respectively. Flip just two of those results and they would’ve found themselves staring at a .500 record which, in the bottom half of the East, can net you a playoff berth.

Looking back, the timing suggests that this was an extremely reactionary move, one that Stan Van Gundy likely executed in a last-ditch attempt to save his job. (Narrator: it didn’t.)

The bigger revelation from that season was Drummond’s evolution as a passer and his role as the fulcrum of Detroit’s offense. In a 46-game sample, before Griffin arrived in town, Drummond was dishing out 3.8 assists per game, almost three more than his career average! That is the type of linear progression we like to see!

That iteration of the Pistons offense featured a legitimate stretch-four in Anthony Tolliver (43.6% on 3s that year on 4.6 attempts per game), low-volume, efficient 3-point threats in the form of Avery Bradley, Luke Kennard, and Reggie Bullock, and a blossoming all-star in Tobias Harris. Drummond was third on the team in assists at the time of the Griffin trade. Tuning into a Pistons game in the first half of that season often meant watching Drummond operate with the ball at either elbow, with the shooters around him cleverly leveraging their long-range accuracy with off-ball screens and split cuts, confident that Drummond would find them if, and when, they found an opening in the opposing defense.

Their ball-handlers would dart into dribble-handoffs with Drummond, often with three shooters stationed on the perimeter, creating space for Drummond’s two-man dance with either Reggie Jackson or Ish Smith.

With Drummond initiating things, the Pistons attempted 28.6 3’s per game, good for 18th in the league over that span, but a far cry from the 23.4 they attempted the season before. It legitimately felt like they were beginning to modernize their offense, but in a unique way, with a big man capable of serving as the center of the offense.

Even at the time, conventional wisdom suggested that the Pistons would be in the market for more shooting and a legitimate lead ball-handler. In fairness, Griffin can step into the latter role fairly easily – for any team – but it’s harder to shoehorn another big man into that role, especially one who’s not exactly the most accurate long-range marksman. After the trade, we all looked to the success of the Blake/DJ pairing as proof that a Blake/Drummond partnership could work. (Turns out Reggie Jackson ain’t exactly Chris Paul. Who knew.) But Drummond was adequately occupying both the role of offensive initiator and pick-and-roll dive man, simultaneously, before Griffin’s arrival.

The Pistons have played nine games since Griffin left the starting lineup to undergo season-ending arthroscopic knee surgery, not exactly what one would deem a large sample size. But in those nine games, Drummond’s assists have ticked back up, to the tune of 2.6 per game, double his career average.

Drummond doesn’t exactly fit neatly into the modern big man archetype – blocking or altering shots in the paint on defense and setting endless amounts of screens and rim-running on the other end while offering little else. He’s roughly middle-of-the-pack as a roll man in ball-screen situations among players who have served that role on at least 15 percent of their team’s possessions, in terms of his scoring frequency on such plays. He scores just 0.98 points per possession in such instances with an effective field goal percentage of 54.2 percent, both below-average numbers.

When it comes to his rim protection, Drummond holds opponents to just 52.7 percent near the rim, well below the league average but not in the upper echelon, in terms of bigs who have challenged at least four such shots per game.

Based on the relative inefficiency of plays where Drummond serves as the roll man, it feels like the perfect role for him is the one he played in that first half of the 2017-18 season, with shooters dotting the perimeter and space to operate from the elbows.

Atlanta’s unwillingness to part with a first-round pick to acquire Drummond doesn’t mean that he’s some sort of big-man dinosaur, in the same vein as Roy Hibbert and (NBA champion) Timofey Mozgov. Griffin likely won’t be around for the rest of the year, giving Drummond a half-season audition to prove that he can again serve as the offensive engine of his team. Or, the rest of his season could take on a different life if he’s moved before the Feb. 6 trade deadline.

Any team kicking the tires on Drummond would be wise to follow Van Gundy’s blueprint from the first half of that 2017-18 season. But in this specific trade market, there are two main impediments to any Drummond trade. The first is Drummond’s salary number for this season – a robust $27 million. The league has taken on an identity – max-level stars with rookie-scale deals and mid-tier value signings supplementing them – that makes it increasingly difficult for teams to come up with trade constructions that make sense for Drummond. No one is trading a star for him, making it increasingly difficult to cobble together comparative salaries that make any deal work.

Secondly, most contenders – Drummond’s deal contains a player option at the end of this season, with many around the league suggesting that he’s likely to decline it and test free agency – seem happy with their current big man rotation. Any non-contender dissecting the Drummond trade market had better be sure they have at least a decent shot at either re-signing him or convincing him to pick up that option, kicking the can down the road an additional year.

The LA Clippers make a little sense as a team with championship aspirations and a hole at the center position. Ivica Zubac has done nice work as their nominal starter this year, while Montrezl Harrell has remained a force off the bench, often soaking up the bulk of the center minutes over the course of the game.

But Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are the leading men in that offense, which means Drummond wouldn’t get to spend nearly as much time on-ball as he did back in the first half of 2017-18. And their closing playoffs lineups will likely feature Harrell – a rim-running menace – in the center spot. (Plus they have relatively few draft assets following the blockbuster trade with the Thunder over the summer.)

The Spurs could offer Rudy Gay and Patty Mills to make the salary numbers work, but I have a hard time seeing the Pistons settling for those two alone as a return for their productive young big man. The Spurs also can’t really afford to give away any shooting, considering the state of their roster. A Gay/Marco Belinelli/Trey Lyles trio also works, purely from a numbers perspective. But again, probably not enough on-court talent to entice the Pistons.

The Spurs could dig into their collection of young players to make any deal worthwhile for the Pistons, but it feels like they’re more inclined to see what happens with the continued development of Derrick White, Dejounte Murray, and Lonnie Walker IV.

The Spurs don’t really have a classical distributor as their lead guard. Murray could fill that role one day but that day is far off into the future, provided it even comes at all. DeMar DeRozan has filled this role admirably – 5.7 assists per game since putting on a Spurs uniform – but he’s more likely to look for his own shot first, before involving his teammates.

If you plop Drummond onto this Spurs team, he’d presumably have opportunities to work with the ball in his hands. Spacing the floor around him could prove to be a critical problem, but with LaMarcus Aldridge‘s recent flirtation with the 3-point line – 50 percent on 5.7 attempts per game since the calendar turned to 2020(!) – there may be just enough room for him to successfully take the reins of the offense in small spurts.

It’s very possible that Drummond finds himself in a new home in about three weeks, but based on the two aforementioned issues, I think it’s more likely he stays in the only NBA city he’s ever called home. Whoever ends up with Drummond for the rest of this season would be wise to follow Van Gundy’s blueprint from two seasons ago. If over the second half of the season, Drummond proves that he can be the driver behind a league-average, modern offense, he could be in line for a hefty contract this summer.

No one’s expecting him to run the entire offense like Nikola Jokic. But tilting the offense ever so slightly toward his strengths, while empowering him to take on a bigger share of the ball-handling and distribution responsibilities? That just might work.