whitehops wrote:i read all of what you said and to be honest i'm confused where this 50% from the field is coming from. if it's from my "closer to 50 than 60%" comment then i should clarify by thinking it'll be more in the 53-55 range next year than the 56-58 range.
Right, well that makes a difference. I inferred the 50% from your comment because I had been talking about him recovering his finishing rate at 0-3 feet from the first two seasons of his career and you countered that with your hesitation about that happening.
That said, at 55%, 12 FGA/g, .450 FTr and 50% FT, now you're talking about a ~ 55% TS player, and that's a little different. +5% FG is not a small thing, and as long as they keep his shooting volume relatively contained and to sets that make sense, that's... OK. Replaceable, but OK until they're trying to eat into a lead.
that said, they're not funnelling the ball to him for post isos on a regular basis. the pistons will still initiate their offense off of high screens, and drummond will still see a lot of alley-oops and other close set-ups. the post touches drummond will likely see are when teams have been rotating which allows drummond to get deeper position or to exploit an advantageous matchup.
SUre, that's classic contemporary usage of a big who hasn't established that he's worth isolation possessions. It's the right way to use them, and it's what made Dwight Howard a worthwhile offensive focus in Orlando.
offensively a lot of people write drummond off as another deandre jordan offensively, whereas he has already shown he can be a lot more than that. he was used to playing face-up in high school and it takes a while to learn how to play with your back to the basket, it's more technically demanding.
No it isn't, leastwise not from a scoring perspective. It's more physical, I'll grant you that, but the sequence and variety of moves you use is quite a bit simpler, particularly with dominant physical tools. The real problem is that he has no touch away from the rim and can't make his free throws.
Over the first 30 seconds of that video, nothing of consequence happens. Then there's a nice and tight spin to a step back J that he's never going to use ever in his NBA career, particularly against opponents with legitimate NBA size and against anything other than that half-hearted crap trap. That's a turnover in the NBA, almost for sure. Still, the handle was impressive. That said, I saw Shaq do similar things at Cole. I've seen Duncan and Yao exhibit surprising dribble prowess in NBA games under certain circumstances. It's not THAT unusual, particularly if they had a later growth spurt or still like to play recreational ball, etc. No sane coach is going to let him go after it face up, and realistically, asking him to be an iso post guy this late when he hasn't really got the handle of it is not likely to turn around and be that interesting. Asking him to do the PnR thing a lot is a whole other story, of course. And of course, that's a highlight video, so it's all best-case stuff where everything worked.
Distilled, I don't think that video means much, because it's basically the same stuff we saw from guys like Anthony Randolph or Eddie Griffin and so forth. The class of competition really makes a difference.
Drummond has his value, but if we're talking about offensive influence, we're really talking about a guy with a significant ceiling. He's not 19; he's gonna be 22, and he's going into his fourth NBA season. He's got 223 games under his belt already, almost 6,400 NBA minutes. That's not small. With him, his offensive value is directly related to his raw FG%, because he has no spacing effect, he is incompetent at the line to an extent he will almost surely never overcome (having exhibited no development there at all) and he has a fairly limited skill set which, even with improvement, doesn't make him a terribly viable prominent weapon.
This isn't a rook we're talking about; most of his weaknesses haven't changed, and because he's so useless at the line, he NEEDS to have a wickedly-elevated FG% or offensive possessions going to him are of exceedingly limited value on balance. That's why I was making a fuss about his specific FG% threshold, because it's what makes him sink or swim as a player. He can screen and roll and crash the offensive glass without significant volume of touches, while still influencing the offense positively that way. The real trick is, can he keep himself above that minimum threshold where it remains worthwhile to involve him more than you see of DAJ, Chandler or Gobert.