Going Forward, Who Do You Take: Drummond or Gobert?

[MotownMadness]

Gobert:
61% TS
120 Ortg

Drummond:
52% TS
11 Ortg

How exactly is Drummond a dominant presence in the paint on offense? On the other hand Gobbert is a dominant presence in the paint on defense considering that he is the best defensive anchor in the league.

IDK, he leads the league in double doubles, offensive rebounds and was avg 17ppg and 17rpg while giving us a 12-3 record with a top 5 offense and defense right after ditching Josh Smith, Then Jennings went down and we made another big roster move acquiring Jackson which he then went on to avg 16 and 15 in his 28 games with him.

Those ortg numbers are nice but it is also a team stat in a lot of ways and Gobert has a better supporting offensive and defensive cast around him. Pistons had nothing like a Hayward or another defender like Favors to play with him last year. Drummond also had a 60%TS along with a 121 ORTG the prior season when he wasn't asked to create his own offense.

Ever since blocks and rebounds were both recorded, only three players have ever grabbed at least 21 percent of possible rebounds, blocked at least 6 percent of the shots while playing at least 1,000 minutes in a season: Marcus Camby in 2005-06, Drummond in 2013-14 and Hassan Whiteside last season.

Drummond did not average 17-17 during our post Josh Smith streak, he actually averaged 13 points and 14 boards. Right now, Drummond is an elite rebounder, average defender and below average offensive player. Sure he has room to grow but not as much as he had while he was a 19 year old rookie.

Drummond will be a solid center for years to come but the odds that he makes the defensive impact that Gobert already does is slim to none IMO. You can talk up Drummond's size and athleticism all you want but at the end of the day, Andre often plays smaller than he is, takes playos off and has a habit of playing soft.

Slam top 50-

"The 2014 holiday season was very merry for Andre Drummond and his Detroit Pistons. Spanning from Christmastime (trading away Josh Smith) through Martin Luther King Day (Brandon Jennings tearing his ACL) the Pistons went 12-3. Pretty impressive, considering the team lost 13 games in a row just a few weeks prior.

During that joyous span of December through January, the Pistons had the League’s third-best record while being led by their young parvenu, Drummond (who averaged 17 points, 17 rebounds and 2 blocks). And perhaps Detroit’s most notable season’s greeting culminated in a winning put-back on the road versus Indiana".


Read more at http://www.slamonline.com/nba/slamonline-top-50/andre-drummond-31

[princeofpalace]

IDK, he leads the league in double doubles, offensive rebounds and was avg 17ppg and 17rpg while giving us a 12-3 record with a top 5 offense and defense right after ditching Josh Smith, Then Jennings went down and we made another big roster move acquiring Jackson which he then went on to avg 16 and 15 in his 28 games with him.

Those ortg numbers are nice but it is also a team stat in a lot of ways and Gobert has a better supporting offensive and defensive cast around him. Pistons had nothing like a Hayward or another defender like Favors to play with him last year. Drummond also had a 60%TS along with a 121 ORTG the prior season when he wasn't asked to create his own offense.

Ever since blocks and rebounds were both recorded, only three players have ever grabbed at least 21 percent of possible rebounds, blocked at least 6 percent of the shots while playing at least 1,000 minutes in a season: Marcus Camby in 2005-06, Drummond in 2013-14 and Hassan Whiteside last season.

Drummond did not average 17-17 during our post Josh Smith streak, he actually averaged 13 points and 14 boards. Right now, Drummond is an elite rebounder, average defender and below average offensive player. Sure he has room to grow but not as much as he had while he was a 19 year old rookie.

Drummond will be a solid center for years to come but the odds that he makes the defensive impact that Gobert already does is slim to none IMO. You can talk up Drummond's size and athleticism all you want but at the end of the day, Andre often plays smaller than he is, takes playos off and has a habit of playing soft.

Slam top 50-

"The 2014 holiday season was very merry for Andre Drummond and his Detroit Pistons. Spanning from Christmastime (trading away Josh Smith) through Martin Luther King Day (Brandon Jennings tearing his ACL) the Pistons went 12-3. Pretty impressive, considering the team lost 13 games in a row just a few weeks prior.

During that joyous span of December through January, the Pistons had the League’s third-best record while being led by their young parvenu, Drummond (who averaged 17 points, 17 rebounds and 2 blocks). And perhaps Detroit’s most notable season’s greeting culminated in a winning put-back on the road versus Indiana".


Read more at http://www.slamonline.com/nba/slamonline-top-50/andre-drummond-31

Slam's inability to fact check doesn't let you off the hook IMO. It only takes a few seconds to look at boxscores. A Slam puff piece is not going to help your argument.

[stitches]

I think the defensive presence and awareness is not for dispute here and Gobert easily grabs that one.

Offensively Detroit tried to force feed Drummond post possessions last year in order to try and develop some offensive moves, but it seems like it didn't have great success. His greater production(and lowered efficiency) are somewhat forced and I don't think at its current form his offensive game is more beneficial to Detroit(below average efficiency) than Gobert's is for Utah.

Here are some offensive categories to illustrate the point:


Drummond:

Transition - 10.6% of his possessions - 67th percentile(i.e. he's good in transition)

Isolation - none

PnR Roll-man - 10.6% of his possessions - 88th percentile(he's elite here, one of the best in the game, should be getting much more possessions in the PnR(ideally at least 20% of his possessions)

Post-ups - 27.5% of his possessions - 23 percentile - horrible, absolutely horrible. I understand that they are trying to teach him to be a post up player and are force feeding him post-possessions, but maybe he's just not skillful enough to be one. I guess we will see if he improves next year, but the signs as of now are not great.

Spot ups - 0.8%(10 possessions for the year) - 96th percentile - extremely small sample size and completely goes against his FT numbers so I would simply discount that as him getting lucky on 10 possessions.

Cuts - 11.4% of his possessions - 32th percentile - pretty bad for big body like him who gets a ton of his production on dump offs.

Putbacks - 31% of his possessions - 28th percentile - that was the most surprising one for me. He's horrible on those. I think it points to both him not having great touch and to the point that he maybe gets to a ton of rebounds through contact and needs second and third putback attempts to finish. Maybe it even points to something he's admitted himself - missing shots on purpose to himself to get higher rebounding numbers. It's extremely hard to judge this one, because virtually every single player in the top 20 of offensive putbacks is above average finisher of those putbacks and Drummond is well below average, but he has almost twice as many as the second highest player(388 vs 230). It's also weird that he doesn't get fouled a lot on those - most other big putback guys get fouled in the high teens of putback possessions, while he is getting fouled only on 11% of the possessions. If I were opposing teams, I'd hack him every single time he gets a rebound close to the basket.

Here's the numbers for Gobert:

Transition - 7.5%% of his possessions - 96th percentile - one of the best finishers in transitions in the league

Isolation - none

PnR Roll-man - 16.7% of his possessions - 72th percentile - pretty good finisher in the PnR, might be better served by having a better PG and improve even more on those.

Post-ups - 4.5% of his possessions - 22 percentile - I think this is where the biggest difference in their efficiency comes - Gobert is as bad as Drummond on those, but the team doesn't waste possessions on him in the post unlike Detroit for Drummond. This might serve Drummond in the future(he might be much improved through in-game practice next season), but at the moment there really isn't much evidence to support the notion he's significantly better post player than Gobert. (That's not endorsement of Gobert more like pointing to the fact that both are horrible).

Spot ups - 2.3%(15 possessions for the year) - 5th percentile - extremely small sample size, but no surprise really - he doesn't seem like a good spot up shooter..

Cuts - 27% of his possessions - 51th percentile - about average for the league, would be nice if he improved a bit, but generally good, those are some of the highest efficiency shots and him getting 27% of his possessions on them is good for his overall efficiency.

Putbacks - 29% of his possessions - 74th percentile - pretty good on those and gets to lots of them(again, this is a high efficiency type of possession)

To summarize - Gobert is better than Drummond on putbacks, in transition and on cuts. Drummond seems better finisher in the PnR. Their efficiency is almost exactly the same (horrible) on post ups, but Drummond got A TON of them, thus dropping his overall FG and offensive efficiency. This might prove good for his future development on the offensive end, but as of now I don't see any reasonable argument for him having better offensive game. Especially if you add Gobert's better passing game, you can very easily argue he is at the very least at least as good as Drummond offensively.

[tsherkin]

During that joyous span of December through January, the Pistons had the League’s third-best record while being led by their young parvenu, Drummond (who averaged 17 points, 17 rebounds and 2 blocks). And perhaps Detroit’s most notable season’s greeting culminated in a winning put-back on the road versus Indiana".


Read more at http://www.slamonline.com/nba/slamonline-top-50/andre-drummond-31

So yeah, as has already been said, relying on the twits at SLAM to provide accurate information is just folly. Best to check yourself.

Dec 17th - January 27th, to maximize his average, Drummond posted 13.0 ppg and 14.2 rpg, not really close to 17/17.

During the 12-3 stretch (which was book-ended by 4-game losing streaks, so I'm not leaving out games in a winning stretch), he averaged 12.9 ppg and 14.1 ppg.

SLAM? Sucks. Check your own facts

Those are still fine numbers, of course, but let's not get hung up on some mythical, invented average.

[MotownMadness]

Damn, I am a sucker and I never want to admit to POP being right but whatever. I think Slam is confusing it with the 7 game win streak at the begining of that run where he did Avg some high numbers. Either way who cares, he did go on to Avg 16 and 15 through 28 games or so post All star break which was more impressive then that little run anyways.

[giordunk]

Bump.

[tsherkin]

Bump.

Not much changing here. Gobert is still about as much better defensively as Drummond is offensively at this stage, and he's capable enough on offense as well.

Right at the moment, a defensive center has more value. I mean obviously, Drummond is part of that two-step bootstrap of Detroit's otherwise inexcusably wretched offense, so he's providing mega value, but generally speaking, you hope to build a team more successfully than that, right?

Better check-in points are the quarter marks of the season.

[tmorgan]

Bump.

Not much changing here. Gobert is still about as much better defensively as Drummond is offensively at this stage, and he's capable enough on offense as well.

Small sample size... but that's not true so far this year, statistically.

Drummond's defense has improved more than his offense this year. It may just be better teammates allowing far less dribble penetration, or it may be just having Moose out of the way, but he looks far more focused on D, and the results show it.

[tsherkin]

Bump.

Not much changing here. Gobert is still about as much better defensively as Drummond is offensively at this stage, and he's capable enough on offense as well.

Small sample size... but that's not true so far this year, statistically.

Drummond's defense has improved more than his offense this year. It may just be better teammates allowing far less dribble penetration, or it may be just having Moose out of the way, but he looks far more focused on D, and the results show it.

I'm on my phone, but we should get into this. Drummond doesn't have Gobert's reach or mobility, so I maintain that he is still the superior defensive weapon. Sample size and competition will be relevant moving forward.

That said, 100% of the point of my comment was to keep us in "we need more games" mode. Drummond is doing some hella impressive stuff on O right now. Despite being a boob at the line, he is exerting a huuuuuge force on Detroit's offense at the moment, and we need to see how that works out over more games.

[HornetJail]

It's always been Drummond for me

[tmorgan]

I'm on my phone, but we should get into this. Drummond doesn't have Gobert's reach or mobility, so I maintain that he is still the superior defensive weapon. Sample size and competition will be relevant moving forward.

That said, 100% of the point of my comment was to keep us in "we need more games" mode. Drummond is doing some hella impressive stuff on O right now. Despite being a boob at the line, he is exerting a huuuuuge force on Detroit's offense at the moment, and we need to see how that works out over more games.

I'm certainly not going to argue reach... that's obviously Gobert by a mile. Not so sure about mobility (excluding reach, which has an effect on what you can get to, which is essentially mobility from a shot-blocking standpoint). Drummond moves exceptionally well for a big man -- if he's slow on a play, it's mental, not physical. I'd still take Gobert as a defender today, but the gap has shrunk significantly this year.

Drummond's playing more minutes, that's the biggest difference. Well, that and confidence, when he has it, as he did in Portland last night. He's a particularly hard player to just "count shots" for, because he gets such a significant percentage off his own work on the offensive boards, but he averaged 11.7 shots in 30.5 minutes last year (.38 shots/minute) and he's averaging 15.2 shots in 38.0 minutes this year (.40 shots/minute). Not much of a difference except additional minutes, although it's impressive he's actually slightly increased his workload in significantly more minutes per game. He *is* getting to the line at a better rate, but his hot start there has disappeared and he's back into the low 40% range again.

He could still do a lot more on offense. He can't be "on" every night, but more nights like yesterday with the post game working and you have a legit 20 ppg scorer. I still don't think that happens this year, but I suppose it could.

[Johnny Firpo]

I would still take Gobert, who I view as the most impactful defender in the league. With that said, I could easily change my mind by the end of this season.

[tsherkin]

I'm certainly not going to argue reach... that's obviously Gobert by a mile. Not so sure about mobility (excluding reach, which has an effect on what you can get to, which is essentially mobility from a shot-blocking standpoint). Drummond moves exceptionally well for a big man -- if he's slow on a play, it's mental, not physical. I'd still take Gobert as a defender today, but the gap has shrunk significantly this year.

I'm not saying Drummond lacks mobility, I'm saying that Gobert's is better. He's lighter on his feet, which is reasonably natural for someone who is 60 or 70 pounds lighter. Drummond's not possessed of the same kind of lateral quickness/footspeed that Gobert has, which is pretty evident when you watch him. He's hella mobile for the kind of tank-body he has, though, and pretty mobile in an absolute sense as well. But Gobert is a different animal in that particular respect.

He *is* getting to the line at a better rate, but his hot start there has disappeared and he's back into the low 40% range again.

Yeah, Drummond shot up from .380 to his present rate (before tonight's game) of .571, after declining in both years since his rookie season. We're likely to see some regression there... but that rate also isn't entirely impossible given that he's a big man who spends the majority of his time inside of 10 feet and hitting the O-boards. I mean obviously we all saw Dwight's ridonkulous FTr over the years, so it's certainly not something that is even entirely atypical.

Anyway, we'll see. Dre has potential; we've known that for years. Some of it is starting together. He's amidst a "quiet" game and is basically 15/15, so that's not an awful baseline

[tmorgan]

Barring foul trouble, Drummond can sleepwalk into a 12 point, 14 rebound performance at this stage. GS doubled him some, Bogut is a good defender, Draymond had him some and helped some... Dre wasn't good last night, but he was clearly tired. We played to win the winnable game on Sunday, and pretty much took a schedule loss in this one. Not that we would likely have won either way, but it was close into the 4th and we ran out of gas. Steve Blake is awful.

I under-predicted 17/15 for Andre before the season. I expected improvement, but he's ahead of where I thought he'd be. 19/17 looks reasonable now. He'll have a few non double-doubles due to fouls, but he might get about 70 of them, maybe 75 even if he's healthy all year. Pretty much unstoppable on the glass unless you want to leave guys wide open on the perimeter.