by
Andre Drummond
The end of the year is for holiday celebrations, big family gatherings, and gifts piled so high you can’t even see the game on the TV. In a perfect world, things would be perfectly jolly as the year draws to a close.
Take yesterday, for example. There were stories written quoting Pistons’ coach Stan Van Gundy in which he praised Andre Drummond to the moon for his “huge improvement” at the free throw line. Van Gundy claimed that not enough credit is being given to Drummond with respect to his free throws.
So call me a Grinch or an ogre, but I think this ranks as one of the silliest sports quotes of 2016.
By simply stating that Drummond deserves all this credit for a near-10 percent jump is ignoring the fact that the previous year’s mark was unprecedented in its ineptitude. In one game last season, he missed 23 free throws (13-36). He finished the year at 35.5%, frankly an unacceptable number for any professional basketball player. What Van Gundy fails to mention is that said number, 35.5%, is just about as low as any hooper at any level can get.
Can't Do Worse
Take one of the worst kids on your high school team. There is little to no chance that he could step to the line and make anything less than 3 of 10. In all likelihood, he’ll make at least five; that’s really the minimum for even the worst of charity tossers. The difficulty of the shot, or lack thereof, makes it impossible to shoot in the teens or twenties. Even the thirties seems like a huge improbability for anyone deemed good enough to play in the NBA.
So for Coach Stan to act like we should be celebrating this major jump to the mid-40s for Mr. Drummond is the definition of “not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.” He puts so little context into these remarks that on the surface it seems to make sense; “Hey, look at this guy almost a full 10 percent better at the line than just one season ago. Amazing!”
It’s troubling on another level, that being Drummond is far and away the highest-paid player on the team. The organization is basically stating in making that commitment, “You’re the guy we believe will lead us to playoff glory.”
And all we expect of that player is a mild raise in percentage from a bar he had placed so low it would get most other players booted right out of the league?
It’s just not good enough. Even though it obviously wasn’t strategic on the part of Drummond, it was a brilliant tactic to finish a full season at such an alarmingly bad percentage. In doing so, he guaranteed that coming back and even making a few more free throws every now and then -- going from 35% to maybe somewhere like 42% -- would bring cheerleaders (in this case) like Van Gundy out to sing the big fella’s praises. It’s a completely hollow angle that Van Gundy's taken here, and also says a lot about the low expectations this franchise has of its $125 million dollar player.
Shaq Not Nearly This Inept
Shaquille O’Neal
Shaquille O’Neal came to be known throughout his Hall of Fame career for his struggles at the foul line. But keep in mind that he was oftentimes above 50%, and had a handful of years right around or above 60. At that time in the league, he was the one everyone joked about and complained that he wouldn’t make any real alterations to his form.
Drummond is markedly worse than that. There’s a major difference between 35-40% and 55-60%, and despite the hopes and wishes of Van Gundy, Drummond has not really shown anything to this point that suggests a jump even to Shaq-territory is coming anytime soon.
The Pistons recently lost a close game at the Palace to the Warriors, the league’s most dominant team. The final margin of victory for Golden State was six points. For the evening, Drummond was 3-of-9 at the free throw line. These exact types of games have occurred for a few years now.
This roster is talented enough on many nights to hang in with some of the better teams in the league, but rarely is their talent so overwhelming that they can blow the doors off said opponent. The margin of error for a middle-of-the-road Eastern Conference team is very thin; just thin enough so that if you have a single player missing more than five throws on any particular night, it is likely to have a major impact on the final score.
Proper Context
Obviously if Drummond is to keep improving in this department, hitting the 50% park and continuing upward, he’ll have earned genuine respect for working at his craft. But it all has to remain in some form of context.
If an NBA team went 0 and 82 for a full season, then went 12-70 the next, would that be a feat worth popping champagne for? Of course not. And while the Drummond example is not quite as extreme, the same principle applies.
There are many issues on this sinking Pistons team at the moment, so by no means does all of the blame fall on #0. But this free throw problem is a serious thorn in the team’s side every single night, and it’s hard to imagine them moving forward or ever taking the next step in the playoffs until it gets corrected in a real way. The last thing a “franchise player” like Drummond needed was for the biggest flaw in his game to be given even the smallest stamp of approval by the organization's loudest and most meaningful voice.
What’s the impetus to change anything if the guy calling the shots is happy? There likely isn’t any, and that critical number for Drummond will almost assuredly stay nestled in that troubling high-30s, low-40s range. And wins for the Detroit Pistons will continue to be very, very hard to come by.
