The Andre Drummond Thread (2014-2015)

[Rob Diaz]

Feel bad for a player trying to develop his game on a team with Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings lol.

[Doormatt]

Feel bad for a player trying to develop his game on a team with Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings lol.

nobody is holding drummond back but himself at the moment, he cant even stay on the floor.

[whitehops]

so in the past three games Drummond has looked noticeably better on the defensive end (the josh smith effect?) and it's reflected in the stats. in the past three games he's put up defensive ratings of 79, 79 and 66. he's now 8th in the league on the season at 98.7, the pistons as a team are at league average at 106.2.

he still makes some mistakes but the pistons as a team are preventing penetration for the most part, but when they do it's controlled and essentially funneled right into dre. Drummond was an absolute nightmare for LeBron, who missed at least half a dozen shots at the rim that were contested by dre, some of them blocked. he's contesting as much as he can and staying as disciplined as he can, it's beautiful to watch.

he's got a big matchup coming up tomorrow against cousins and after that the pistons play the spurs, mavs, hawks and raps in the next week so those will be a good barometer to see if he's just been shutting down weak teams or if he can do it going forward.

[Navas]

Josh Smith being gone has had an obvious effect but that's been discussed enough.

One thing I've noticed about Drummond, is that he's becoming a paint presence. Against the Magic, they see Drummond in the paint, they thought twice about driving.

[whitehops]

little bump on his progress.

he's really starting to develop his hook shot now and looks more comfortable going to it. at the start of the year he was getting posted up a decent amount down low and the results were not good. for the month of November he was shooting 45%, after shooting 62% from the field the year before. since February he has been shooting 53.5%. last year he only shot 48 hook shots, making 27 (56%), while this year he has already attempted 171, making 74 (43%).

that's a little skewed, however, as he shot 8 for 29 in October/November (28%) while he has shot 41 for 90 (46%). in the past two months alone he has taken almost twice as many hook shots as he had all last season.


I'm not trying to say that he's been pivoting with both feet, throwing out fakes, etc. his go-to move has simply been a hook shot over his right shoulder, pretty much the most basic shot a big man can take. the difference between now and the beginning of the year is that he looked very awkward when posting up and was often off-balance when shooting. now he is methodically taking controlled dribbles to get into position and then going up balanced for the hook shot. the first step to becoming a dominant post player is to have one g-to move. from there you use the threat of that to go to counter moves, and then counters to those counters. the fact that he's developing his go-to move is a huge plus, especially since SVG seems to be fully supportive of giving him touches in the post. he's been getting about 5-8 post touches a game recently, which is a good number I think for his stage in development.

here are some videos just to give an idea:

against the lowly heat frontcourt
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJg_dIVsoN8[/youtube]

against the raptors
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzPl_W1jWu0[/youtube]

and some POWER
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FplcPL_KtqU[/youtube]


he has taken some clear steps this season so things are definitely looking up for him going into next year.