Detroit Pistons: 3 Goals for Andre Drummond for the Upcoming Season

3. Become a More Efficient Offensive Player

During Andre Drummond’s first two seasons in the league, he was able to maintain a True Shooting % of 57.8 as a rookie and 59.9 as a sophomore. That was despite being the worst free throw shooter in the league with a percentage of 37.1 as a rookie and 41.8 as a sophomore. Drummond shot over 60 percent from the field in both seasons because he played within himself. He scored a lot of points on offensive rebound put-backs, and lob finishes out of the pick-and-roll.

Since then, Drummond has tried to add more to his game and it has badly hurt his efficiency. He started posting up more and moving a bit farther from the basket. During his rookie and sophomore years, Drummond shot 81.6 percent of his shots from 0-3 feet and 81.4 percent of his shots from 0-3 feet respectively. He shot 14.6 percent of his shots from 3-10 feet and 17.2 percent of his shots from 3-10 feet.

During his 3rd season, that number increased to 29.2 percent. In year 4, it increased even more to 35.8 percent. In year 5, it was 42 percent. His true shooting percentage cratered because his percentages from that range are as follows: 34.5%, 40.9%, and 38.1%. Here are his true shooting percentages in those seasons: 50.4 his 3rd season, 49.9 his 4th season, and 51.8 his 5th season. These are not great numbers for a big man who still spends most of his time around the basket.

Andre Drummond’s true shooting percentage did start to tick back up last season. He got his percentage of shots from 3-10 feet down to 27.1 percent, but he still shot poorly from that range with a field goal percentage of 31.4. One of the big reasons for his improvement was his improved free throw percentage, which skyrocketed from 38.6 percent the previous season to 60.5 percent.

If Andre Drummond can continue his improved free throw shooting and get his attempts from 3-10 feet back down, he should be able to become the very-efficient big man he was his first couple seasons. However, there is now an additional wrinkle that Andre Drummond has hinted at adding to his game, a 3-point shot. Just take a look at Andre Drummond’s Instagram or the many different videos that users have posted on Twitter and you can see that he has been working on his 3-point shot. Andre Drummond has even said he is shooting over 200 3s a day in order to get better at it.

While this is something that almost every big man is adding to their game, it is going to make it difficult for Andre Drummond to get his efficiency back up because there is no history of him being a great shooter from anywhere outside of 3 feet. However, if he continutes his upward trajectory of his free throw percentage and continues to cut out more of the shots from 3-10 feet, it is still possible for him to get close to his efficiency for his first couple years while shooting a couple threes a game.

Even if Andre Drummond is not great at 3-pointers, which is to be expected based on the fact he has no history of shooting them and historically bad free throws shooters rarely just magically become good shooters. If he even just matches last year’s percentage of 31.4 percent from 3-10 feet or even the 28.6% he shot from 10-16 feet, he will be more efficient as long as he is only shooting a couple 3s a game.

I would prefer he doesn’t do it and focus on the things that made him a lot more efficient his first few seasons of his career, but it is very difficult to take off the reigns from a player who has been given more responsibility offensively the last few seasons like Drummond has. One of his goals for this season should be to focus on the shots that he is best at and try to cut out as many of the bad hook shots he has taken from the 3-10 feet range.