Why we love Andre Drummond and you should too

Andre Drummond is the best rebounder in the NBA. He might go down in history as one of the best rebounders of all time. Yet, on a franchise that has a legacy of turning some of the best rebounders in the game into folk heroes, Drummond is inundated with endless criticism. About his effort. About his passion. About his intelligence. Sports media has made it a hobby to vilify him, and a legacy as a great rebounder, and a breakout season on both ends of the floor seems to be going by unnoticed.

How the heck did we get here?

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Drummond’s breakout season

Let’s back up, and then back up again. Drummond just concluded a historically impactful regular season for the Detroit Pistons on April 10.

He finished 2018-19 with more than 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, 100 blocks, and 100 steals. It was the fourth time he’s eclipsed those marks in a single season, more than any player in NBA history (including Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon, who did it three times). Drummond also won his third rebounding title. He’s only the 11th player in NBA history to win multiple rebounding crowns. Oh, and Drummond is still only 25 years old.

Drummond’s 20 points and 18 rebounds in that April 10 win against the woeful New York Knicks also helped the Pistons, who were playing without All-Star Blake Griffin, clinch a playoff berth for just the second time in the past 10 years. The team’s 41 wins this season represent their second highest win total in 11 seasons.

With Griffin limited due to nagging injuries throughout the second half of the season and inconsistent guard play all season long, it was Drummond who kept the Pistons competitive. The team went 15-11 after the February All-Star break, led by Drummond elevating his play.

He won two Eastern Conference Player of the Week awards, one in March and one in April. He averaged nearly two more rebounds per game over his already league-leading total during that stretch. He also averaged more assists, steals, and blocks per game while averaging fewer turnovers. His offensive rating jumped from 108 to 121. He shot 8% better from the free throw line (64 percent vs. 56%) after the All-Star break.

His game took an even bigger leap in the 35 games after returning from a concussion in late January on both ends of the floor. His true shooting percentage jumped from 51.5% to 61.1%. His improvement on the defensive end has been even more impressive.

The defense at the rim stat on NBA.com isn’t gospel, but for Drummond it is telling. He’s always struggled defending the rim, and the tracked stat captures this. This season, among players who defended at least 200 shots up to Jan. 25 (through his concussion), Drummond gave up 60.9% at the rim. That was eighth-worst among the 26 players who qualified. Since Jan. 26, among players who defended 150 shots at the rim, Drummond gave up just 51.8% shooting. That placed him sixth-best in the NBA.

Oh yeah, he also finished the season leading the league in 20 point-20 rebound games with 11 -- the second highest single season total in NBA history.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Andre Drummond is good. Really good. If only people would start noticing.

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

An outdated narrative refuses to die

After beating the Knicks, Drummond was interviewed by Fox Sports Detroit’s Johnny Kane. As they have throughout the season, Drummond and teammate Reggie Jackson did their running interview gag where Jackson pretends to be Drummond’s interpreter. It makes little sense to anyone except for them, but is harmless and definitely more fun than the typical formulaic jock-speak post-game interviews. Kane, throughout the season, has seemed to be in on, or at least unbothered by, the lighthearted antics.

Fox 2 Detroit sports personality Jennifer Hammond, however, found it anything but lighthearted on that night, tweeting a stern lecture about professionalism. “Kudos to @JohnnyKaneFSD for keeping a sense of humor and hanging in there for a less than professional post game interview with two of the Pistons ‘Leaders.’ ”

The tweet would’ve seemed out of place if the sentiment weren’t a familiar refrain in Detroit media by now. Drummond, despite continuously improving and consistently posting historic numbers, has been a constant target of Detroit sports media rants. Mike Valenti of Detroit’s CBS-affiliated 97.1 The Ticket sports talk station has routinely criticized Drummond and called for him to be traded. In a January segment, Valenti even caught himself nearly saying he “hated” Drummond on the air (at the 1:30 mark in this clip, he appears to say, “... because I hate, because I just wanted Andre Drummond gone”).

The criticism of the Pistons and Drummond by 97.1 has been so persistent and pointed that it even drew a stern rebuke from Pistons broadcaster Greg Kelser, one of the most laidback personalities working in Detroit sports media, earlier this season. But the largest sports talk station in Detroit isn’t the only source of criticism. In January, Detroit News columnist Bob Wojnowski suggested the Pistons should consider trading Drummond. After the Pistons were blown out in game one of the 2019 NBA Playoffs against Milwaukee, Oakland Press columnist Pat Caputo wrote of Drummond, “This is the Pistons’ idea of a max player?” After the Pistons clinched a playoff spot, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press referenced the social media backlash Drummond regularly receives from Detroit fans.

[Editor’s note: He hasn’t escaped pointed criticism from Detroit Bad Boys, either, with Steve Hinson suggestion a parting of the ways in January that would be beneficial for both sides of the relationship.]

Drummond is still young by NBA standards, durable, and has improved each season he’s been in the league. He’s the exact sort of productive young talent NBA franchises crave. He’s already one of the most dominant rebounders the NBA has ever seen, in a city that typically adores great rebounders.

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Detroit and the Art of the Rebound

No franchise has had a greater role in elevating rebounding to its own art form than the Detroit Pistons. A Piston has won a rebounding title in each of the last four decades -- Bill Laimbeer in the 1980s, Dennis Rodman in the 1990s, Ben Wallace in the 2000s, and Drummond in the 2010s. Of the 11 players in NBA history to win multiple rebounding titles, three (Rodman, Wallace, and Drummond) were Pistons.

Cliché basketball lore suggests that rebounding simply equates to effort. Do you box out? Do you follow your shot on offense? Do you hustle? Are you tough? Congratulations, anyone with that tryhard attitude can be a good rebounder, says conventional wisdom.

The unique attributes of Laimbeer, Rodman, Wallace, and Drummond obliterate that thinking. Each had different physical characteristics, strengths, and approaches to gathering rebounds, and each proved to have impossible-to-replicate skillsets that allowed them to excel at the same skill in completely different ways.

Laimbeer, beloved for being a professional irritant to opponents throughout his career, captured his rebounding title despite appearing to barely leave the ground when he jumped and playing a far more perimeter-oriented style than his frontcourt peers across the league were in that era. He used lower body strength and a keen awareness of positioning to secure rebounds against stronger or more athletic players he was routinely matched up against.

In an interview with The Sporting News in 1986, Laimbeer said, “You learn where the ball will be coming off the board. You put your body between you and your man. Rebounding is how I make my living.”

For every physical limitation Laimbeer overcame, his teammate, Rodman, had ample supplies of speed, strength, and athleticism. Although he was plucked from seemingly nowhere by the Pistons (he was a third round pick out of a NAIA college in 1986) and stood only 6-foot-7 with a lithe build, Rodman was fast and athletic enough to guard perimeter players and strong enough to hold his own against giants in the post.

No player did more to make rebounding an art than Rodman. In a Sports Illustrated article in 1996 when Rodman was a member of the Chicago Bulls, writer Phil Taylor sat through a film session with Rodman where he was studying how misses from individual players usually came off the rim. “Anytime I see Scottie (Pippen) or Michael (Jordan) shoot from the top of the key, I know the ball will come off the rim to the right,” Rodman told SI.

He didn’t always need to box out because he studied things that no one studied at the time and understood angles better than his peers on the court. He was also a “quick” jumper -- he didn’t jump as high as some players in the league, but he could make two-to-three bursts of small jumps in the time it took other players to jump once, allowing him to tip the ball multiple times and coral it against bigger players.

In his autobiography, Bad as I Wanna Be, Rodman, the first player in NBA history to average 16 or more rebounds in a season (the second, incidentally, is Drummond), clearly articulated his desire to elevate rebounding’s importance and do it better than anyone. “Nobody--ever--has taken rebounding and built an entire career off it,” Rodman wrote.

Rodman’s evolution of rebounding from necessary gruntwork to beautiful art was built on by Wallace. Wallace, like Rodman, had an unlikely path to the NBA as an undrafted player. He bounced around the league before becoming a star with the Pistons. He became the face of Detroit during the Pistons championship season in 2004, and controlled games with his dominant rebounding and defense.

Despite his limitations as a traditional offensive player, he bristled at the notion that he was a one-dimensional player, once stating in an interview, “I’m not a defensive specialist, I’m a basketball player.”

Wallace was the leader of one of the most surprising championship teams in modern NBA history. His offensive rebounding created extra possessions for a team that had limited scoring prowess. His ability to cover ground better than any player in the league at the time allowed him to smother opposing guards while switching on pick-and-rolls yet still recover to swoop under the basket and ensnare rebounds.

Rebounding is synonymous with Detroit basketball. The combination of finesse and artistry with sheer brute force required to be elite at it is rare, and few places appreciate it more than blue collar Detroit. Drummond’s historic rebounding production is on-brand for Detroit’s basketball history. So why isn’t his production earning him comparable adulation?

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Drummond and the Myth of Easy

There are plenty of legitimate reasons, Drummond gets criticized. But too many of the takes we hear are from the swamp of the professional hot take industry and its slavish minions. We all understand why. He’s young, rich, and black. That combination itself draws the consistent ire of predominantly white, predominantly male sports media for prominent star black athletes in markets across the country.

Drummond’s teams also haven’t won much. Of course, that’s not as much a reflection on Drummond as it is the supporting casts around him, particularly the wonky roster construction throughout his career that de-emphasized shooting in favor of size at a time when the league was trending smaller and faster. In more recent years, the fact that the floor-spacing shooters added to the team haven’t consistently, ya know, spaced the floor, has been … problematic. But, fair or not, star players are expected to elevate mediocre or worse talent. And Drummond isn’t the first star in Pistons history to face that sort of criticism -- Grant Hill’s brilliant Pistons run was perennially underappreciated because he couldn’t transform every Tom, Dick, and Ivano Newbill assembled around him into a contending team.

The bulk of criticism lobbed at Drummond, though, fits vaguely into a critique of a perceived lack of “effort” on his part. In short, he makes his historic production look ridiculously easy.

Laimbeer, Rodman, and Wallace all had physical limitations that they overcame, which is part of why they’re so beloved. None were viewed as elite NBA prospects, let alone future stars. Drummond is the complete opposite -- he’s been an elite talent since he was a teenager. If he would’ve been allowed to enter the NBA out of high school, he likely would’ve been the first pick in the draft and was the top-rated high school player in the country by ESPN in 2011.

He’s bigger than Laimbeer, Rodman, and Wallace. He’s more offensively gifted than Wallace and Rodman. He’s a better defensive player than Laimbeer. His athleticism and speed is comparable to Rodman’s despite the fact that Drummond’s playing weight is nearly 70 pounds heavier than Rodman’s.

He isn’t a very outwardly emotional player, whereas Laimbeer never met an opponent or referee (and sometimes even a teammate) he couldn’t piss off, Wallace was overflowing with visible passion and hair to match, and Rodman was … well … Rodman. Drummond is quieter, it’s easy to lose track of him for large chunks of the game and then only realize how impactful he was when checking the boxscore afterwards and noticing his video game stats.

Everything looks simple for him. Which isn’t meant to say that it is simple for Drummond, of course. He’s typically the biggest, strongest player on the court. Other teams put their most physical players on him, foul him intentionally to put him on the free-throw line, and clutch and batter him at virtually all times, much of it going unnoticed by officials. Bigger players always face a physicality disadvantage -- the impact of physical play on someone Drummond’s size isn’t as viscerally noticeable as the reverse, if a big player bumps a little player and sends him sprawling. Just because it’s harder to see doesn’t change the toll it takes on Drummond’s body over the course of a season. Just because Drummond is faster and stronger and can more easily make plays or get to balls in volumes that only a select few players can rival doesn’t mean he isn’t expending effort. He’s well-known for having to change uniforms at halftime because of how much he sweats, in fact.

Drummond also studies the shot patterns of his teammates and opponents and constantly works on positioning, much like Rodman described doing throughout his career. On an appearance on Desus and Mero in 2018, Drummond noted that he uses his size while rebounding to simply set up and refuse to be moved.

“I do my work early, I get in position and move ’em back,” he said.

Off the court, Drummond is community-oriented. He’s a Special Olympics Global Ambassador. He’s worked with the Boys and Girls Club and provided support for Flint, Michigan, residents during the Flint Water Crisis. He’s a DJ and hip hop artist. He’s interesting, talented, and a great representation of Detroit’s proud basketball legacy.

He also exhibits once-in-a-generation talents at rebounding as a unique craft that are every bit as distinguishable as Steph Curry’s long range shooting or Magic Johnson’s passing or Kawhi Leonard’s defense.

In short, Drummond is building on Detroit’s greatest contribution to modern basketball -- the art of the rebound. He’s doing it in an era in which throwback big men like him were supposed to be obsolete. The Pistons have been mostly an ignored and irrelevant franchise over the last decade. Andre Drummond connects them to their proud past, and gives them the best chance at a brighter future.