Post#75 » by tmorgan » Mon Feb 12, 2024 5:05 pm
Those of you that are sure Duren is just another Drummond are officially on my “can’t trust you for analysis” list. It’s not even hard to find the differences if you make any effort at all.
Ok, first the similarities:
Center, Detroit, came into the league young (OAD players). Great rebounding numbers at a young age. Garbage men and lob catchers on offense early on. Defensive struggles early on, despite the occasional highlight block. Both have decent handles for a big.
Differences:
1) Drummond was huge in the legs and shoulders as a teenager. Freak athlete in that he moved well even though he was so big. Sort of like Shaq in that regard (just body type, don’t freak out, people).
Duren is also extremely athletic, but in a much leaner sense despite having a grown man’s physique as a teenager. More like, say, Kemp. He shouldn’t slow down as quickly as Drummond did as he ages (unless he eats like Kemp did). Rebounding style is different, too. Duren has glue hands. Drummond did a lot of attempted tip-ins.
2) Duren plays with ferocity. He tries to dunk everything. Drummond has this odd fascination with layups. If anything, Drummond should be better at dunking through people than Duren, because he’s huge. But that usually isn’t his game.
3) Duren can actually shoot, even if he isn’t doing much of it yet. Much better touch, as evidenced by his free throw percentage. Drummond shot under 40% from the line for his first five years, fixed it to some extent, and has shot between 50 and 60% since. Duren shot 61% as a rookie and is shooting 74% this year. Duren’s jumper looks smooth. I’m very confident he’ll have a high post game soon, with some hope he can go out even further over time.
4) The biggest difference, though, is attitude. Duren is a tireless worker with no visible ego. Drummond could never stay in his lane after his rookie year. He fought teammates for rebounds, talked about “his” team, and did so many things he just wasn’t good at. I think he was humbled and is now happy to be in the league as a role player, but he had multiple years where his head just wasn’t right.
I don’t know what Duren’s ceiling is. It depends on how his defense develops, mostly, because he’s still prone to mistakes and isn’t yet much of a help defender. Offensively, I think he has what it takes to score an efficient 20 ppg or a really efficient 16 ppg, depending on how he is used. He’ll lead the league in rebounding multiple times — but again, Drummond did that, and that isn’t enough to be a big impact player.
Guess we’ll see. I’d take him 4th in a redraft, based on what i’ve seen so far.