Welcome to the “What’s New” article series. I’m highlighting some Pistons players and comparing their “Form” (to steal a soccer term) with previous years. We’ll take a look at some statistical trends, as well as look at some stylistic or methodological shifts in their play. (Stats are up to date as of the Cleveland Cavaliers game, but the article has been edited as of the Boston Celtics game). What's new with: ANDRE DRUMMOND Basketball-Reference Page here Arguably the most important player on the Detroit Pistons, the team record usually heavily reflects Andre’s impact: The team is 9-0 when he has a positive +/-, and 2-6 when he has a negative +/-. He’s second on the team in minutes played, leads them in defensive rating (Boban is lower, but you have to play more than 14 minutes to count) and is 6th in offensive rating, with a nice +9 overall net. He’s averaging career highs for BPM (and a MASSIVE leap in DBPM). He’s tripled his career assist % (to be fair, he’s also doubled his TO%), and is averaging a career high TRB% (something he has already been historically good at.) He’s shooting free throws at 62%. But what’s NEW, right? Those are all fun stats, but how has Andre changed? The rebounding rate isn’t new - it’s a bump over his already impressive rates, but everybody already knows he’s great at that (if you didn’t know this please contact me I need to help you). Everything else though - that’s all pretty new. Andre Drummond might not be the most ‘improved’ player in the NBA, but he is perhaps the most dramatically ‘different’. The eye test tells us that he’s been moved to new spots on the floor - he’s traded post ups for elbow touches, and there is the obvious shift to more of a distributing role. His impact on defense has changed in a lot of ways too. The eye test isn’t exact, and unfortunately, the NBA’s tracking data isn’t always perfect either, but we’ll dive in anyways. First and foremost, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Drummond’s nasal surgery, which has supposedly helped his breathing. Long ridiculed for his effort and consistency on both ends, Drummond has seen a noticeable uptick at times this season in his effective work-rate this year. Perhaps a simple fluke at the start of the year, perhaps a renewed self-confidence, perhaps a result of his breathing, or perhaps (probably) a combination of all 3 and a bit more, it’s nevertheless something to keep an eye on, especially as Andre plays deeper into the 4th quarter. The Offense We can start with the obvious media narrative: the free throw shooting. Drummond, a career 38% shooter, is shooting 62% from the stripe. He’s averaging his 3rd highest free throw rate (45%, FT Rate is the % of scoring attempts that draw a foul), in large part because he’s asking for contact. It might really be his highest rate ever; the only two seasons ahead of it are his rookie year, when he had a paltry 159 FTA (he’s averaged over 350 in every other season) and his All-Star 15-16 season, when he was getting hacked like mad. He hasn’t been subjected to the hacking very often yet in the ‘17-’18 campaign, which means if we make a bologna “earned free throw attempt rate” stat this would probably be his best year in that regard. Closely tied into the free throws is the new shot profile for Andre Drummond. So far in the ‘17-’18 season he’s playing with a renewed aggression both in deciding to score and in finishing towards the rim, often off the drive. Last season Drummond took just .7 drives to the rim according to NBA’s player tracking; this year he’s averaging 1.9 drives. He’s averaging 2.3 post ups on the block, down from 6.9(!), leading to less falling hook shots wasting valuable possessions. I personally don’t believe those hooks (and the post in general) were always officiated properly in the NBA, but at the very least this is taking the decisions out of the official’s hands. The drives are often coming from the elbow, where his activity profile has changed dramatically: Drummond is averaging 6.2 elbow touches, up from 2.5. With the ability to survey the floor from the free throw line, Andre has shown himself to be much more comfortable picking a lane to face up and attack the rim, something he was never comfortable doing along the baseline (he almost never went to the baseline on drives down low, clearly uncomfortable with the footwork required to take that angle). Drummond is tied for 1st in the NBA in general paint touches, and 2nd in FTA generated from paint touches. His current 11.4 paint touches per game is almost DOUBLE the touches generated for him in the past, always a good sign. A huge part of his shifting offense has been the new playmaking role. Drummond has more than TRIPLED his pass% out of the post to 30%, up from 9%, and brought his assist% from the post up above 5% after posting 1.1% last season. He’s passing out of the elbow, both in dribble hand-off/pitch situations and as a true passer. His 15.8% assist% is three times more than his career 4.6% mark, and this season he’s generating 5.3 potential assists per game, up from 2.3 last year. For an in depth look at Drummond’s passing, you can find a fantastic article by Joseph Sinke of Hashtag Basketball here. The new passing role also helps space the floor around Drummond, and free him up for this new driving aggression. In the post, Drummond wasn’t threatening enough to draw consistent doubles, and wasn’t able to see the floor well enough to break down the defense. Now that he’s paired with aggressive cutters like Avery Bradley, and allowed to view the floor from the elbows, Drummond has been able to make decisions with much easier reads. Passing big men are always a threat because it’s harder to contest the passing angles, which helps encourage defenders to stick closer to their man and honor their man to man assignments more - helping keep the floor open for Drummond to pull his new fake-handoff drives. Running offense through Drummond also removes a negative spacing element from the floor - he can pick a pass to four other shooters or cutters, no longer stuck posting up down low or (possibly worse) stuck as a dummy spacer out on the edge. It also gives Drummond the simple pleasure of being involved in a meaningful way, which certainly helps keep him engaged. In addition to traditional passing from the elbows, Drummond also has begun to run more and more dribble hand-off (DHO) and dribble pitch actions around the top of the arc. The DHO is a sneaky play; ball handlers can come rocketing off other off-ball screens with a trailing defender to snatch the ball and turn a corner or pull up without any dribble. In addition, as the screener hands the ball off, he can turn and roll to the rim in a sort of moving screen they might not get away with otherwise. It's more difficult to switch DHOs, because the screener's defender has to be able to catch up with a ball handler whose already running, and it's difficult for even elite defenders to get over the screen. Drummond started DHO actions in '16-'17 with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, but has really evolved his chemistry with Avery Bradley, and improved his feel for rolling off the DHO action and finding pockets to attack. In addition, he's been given the green light to pull the ball out of the DHO action, reverse it to a different side of the floor, or attack himself, something he had never done before. The dribble pitch, where the screener actually throws a short pass (compared to allowing the ball handler to snatch it off his hands like a QB/RB exchange in the DHO) has also created some funky actions that haven't done much for Andre himself, but have helped other guys get looks - something I hope to highlight in a future article. Drummond, of course, remains a potent pick and roll threat as a screener, and having an offense that no longer relies solely on pure on-ball screen action has allowed it to be a much more natural element of his game. Jackson’s return has helped - Jackson simply draws more attention in the mid-range than Ish Smith could provide last year, and gets there quicker, allowing Drummond more open lanes to roll to the rim and position himself for the lob or to gather soft floater rebounds. Smith has a unique way of running offense in the half court; he takes quick, probing, swerving routes through the paint, drawing and scrambling multiple defenders through multiple pseudo-pick-and-rolls until eventually he finds the kick out or a mid-range jumper. Unfortunately, his style rarely leads to true roll opportunities for his big man, which is why I think Drummond looks more comfortable and active next to Jackson than he does Smith, and is averaging a career high 5.6 ORBs a game. The Defense The defensive side of the ball has always been the enigma for Drummond. He’s huge, insanely athletic, and yet has never seemed to translate it into real impact, and basketball simply doesn’t have the statistics and data we need to help decipher the eye test. All we’ve got to help us go through it is some coach talk over the years. There have been some interesting developments this year however, and some schematic shifts in how Drummond has played that have had (at least in my eyes) a positive impact on the defensive side of the ball. Drummond’s long-standing problem has been his decisiveness in covering the pick-and-roll or pick-and-pop, and his discipline at the point of the shot. In the past he’s struggled to commit to getting out to shooting big men, or dropped too far covering the drive, and generally been stuck in the middle too often. He’s struggled with jumping for silly blocks and exposing the rim, or swiping for steals and giving up easy drives or stop-and-pop jumpers. But it seems this year the coaches have tweaked things a bit to help him be more aggressive outside and functional inside. Andre's unique strength on defense has always been his agility, and his ability to have a respectable impact on the perimeter considering his massive size. This season Detroit has switched him onto guards more often, and done more aggressive hedging and recovery with on-ball-screens. This is a departure from more conservative stylings of years past, but also lowers the requisite defensive IQ for some coverages and allows Andre to simply react physically to the play in front of him. This system requires more communication, as it inherently puts the dense in mismatches that need to be re-switched off the ball when possible, or recovered to after hedges, and sometimes might increase the amount of 'scramble' situations when things go wrong. Additions like Bradley and Tolliver, high IQ defenders who communicate well, as well as Stanley Johnson's increased role, have helped take some of the burden off of Andre’s shoulders in that department. Drummond has also been used in trapping situations at times, sometimes very aggressively against great guards like Kyrie Irving or Steph Curry, where his active hands, incredible length, and elite recovery speed have allowed him to force turnovers and late-clock possessions. It's been especially potent when paired with the equally handsy Avery Bradley or Stanley Johnson. In addition, it seems like Andre’s finally started to find a tiny bit of patience at the rim. It's still tough to decipher, but he’s had better approaches to help defense, and better contests at the rim. It’s still unclear if he’ll ever be good in this area; his sheer profile will deter plenty of attempts, and he forces an incredible amount of deflections with his active feet and hands, but he struggles at times to remain vertical, attacks the ball too aggressively, and hunts rebounds a little too much. You can see in the picture below, he's just not turned for a real contest, and he gets a foul here instead of a contest because he's still late to step up for a real contest and too aggressive towards getting the ball. These issues are somewhat mitigated by the impact he has on the perimeter now, and by the savvy help defense the Pistons have started to play (especially Anthony Tolliver) but it remains perhaps the largest hole in Drummond's game. While I don't neccessarily consider rebounding to be "defense" like many people (I consider it to be part of the transition game myself. Your rebounding philosophy is almost always tied to how many people you want to run and how quickly you want them to go.), it's perhaps worth noting that Drummond is the league's leading rebounder. The team philosophy remains "Andre will handle it", and it's a massive credit to him that he continues to do, leading the team to 6th and 10th in ORB% and DRB% almost single-handed, on a team that somehow manages to be only 27th in rebounds per game.
The Wrap Overall, this has been a dramatic shift for the franchise big man. A different offense, run through him, leading to more efficient looks, and a comfortable uptick in free throw percentage have helped him make a serious leap on the offensive side of the ball. Aggressive perimeter defense has helped him impact the game more actively on the defensive side of the ball. There remains a number of things he can improve upon moving forwards, but this can be considered a real step forward for Drummond. This isn’t just a bounce-back season after a struggle (for everyone involved) last year, but a true step forward, even from his all-star campaign in the ‘15-’16 season. All that remains to be seen is how comfortable and consistent he can become moving forwards, and what new wrinkles might we see next year.
0 Comments
|
ArticlesThis is the space for any think pieces, long forms, short forms, medium forms, etc. about the NBA. Archives
February 2018
Categories |