Welcome to our Sixers player preview series! Between now and Sixers Media Day on Sep. 30, we will preview each one of the 14 players on the team's standard roster, posing two critical questions that will help determine their fate in 2024-25 before making a prediction about the player's season to come.
The Sixers' backup center position has been a revolving door for much of Joel Embiid's career, and this offseason the team decided to attempt to revive its best days: they brought back veteran center Andre Drummond, who served admirably in the role for 49 games in the 2021-22 season before being traded. Years later, how will Drummond look over the course of a full season in Philadelphia?
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How will Drummond fare against stretch bigs?
Drummond's strengths are clear: he is arguably the single best rebounder of his generation, and he can set hard screens and roll to the rim. But he has obvious weaknesses as well — he is a total non-shooter with limited offensive utility, for example. On a star-laden Sixers team, though, it is not as if Drummond will ever be asked to step out and knock down a three or initiate offense.
Drummond does have another critical downside to his game, and it is one that cannot be masked or glossed over as easily: immobility.
Teams can hunt for switches, but the easiest way to force someone like Drummond to move his feet and defend on the perimeter is to play a stretch big. Those matchups often prove to be very problematic for Drummond:
Watching Drummond navigate these matchups will be a sticking point for me throughout the entire regular season, if only because it is just about inevitable that he will have to survive in them to be playable against the reigning champion Boston Celtics, who loom over every hopeful Eastern Conference contender as the overwhelming favorite to reach the NBA Finals for the third time in four seasons.
When at full strength, the Celtics exclusively used five-out offenses during the playoffs thanks to a wonderful center rotation featuring Kristaps Porziņġis and former Sixer Al Horford. Their floor spacing is impeccable and it allowed them to capitalize in many opportunities against players like Drummond.
Can Drummond become more of a defensive playmaker?
Drummond owns a 7-foot-6 wingspan — one of the best in the entire NBA — and spends the vast majority of his time on the floor in the paint or around the basket. Yet throughout his dozen years of experience in the league, he has almost exclusively posted notably low block numbers.
One would think plays like these would be commonplace for Drummond, but they are actually few and far between:
Drummond is capable of notching steals more often than many bigs, putting his length to use. Drummond has logged 23,469 total minutes in his career and has only 36 more blocks than steals — his per-game averages in both categories are rounded to 1.3.
Sixers head coach Nick Nurse is a strong believer in winning the possession battle by forcing turnovers — Drummond's ability to do so makes him a fit in that sense — but Nurse also believes in deploying his bigs as aggressive shot-blockers. His primary goal for Embiid on the defensive end of the floor headed into last season was for the reigning NBA MVP to swat more shots around the rim.
In theory, Nurse could attempt to convince Drummond to tweak his defensive tendencies. But Drummond is entering his 13th season of NBA action, and it is much easier said than done to have someone like that make fundamental changes to the way they approach the game.
Prediction
Drummond does his job well in the regular season, but is exploited in the playoffs by any teams who can run a five-out offense that the Sixers face.
I remain of the belief that Paul Reed was more helpful for the Sixers than many like to think now that he is no longer with the team, but if Drummond can just give the Sixers the same production he has given all of his teams over the last several years, it is hard to imagine him not being a clear upgrade over Reed.
The fact that the Sixers can count on Drummond being the most effective rebounder in the league on a per-minute basis sets an outstanding baseline of productivity for him — at the very least, he will be able to revive offensive possessions and complete defensive possessions at elite rates.
In the regular season, I expect Drummond to be one of the few most helpful backup centers in the NBA. That is, of course, a massive asset for a Sixers team that has always struggled mightily when Embiid is not on the floor. But whether or not he is a viable playoff player is very much in question — and if I was asked to guess whether it is more likely that Drummond shines in the playoffs or is rendered unplayable, I would without hesitation choose the latter.
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This does not mean Drummond is not a good player or that the Sixers should not have signed him; he is an outstanding backup center and bringing him back to Philadelphia was a prudent choice by the team. But just because he will not have to grapple with the same issues that caused Reed to struggle in the playoffs does not mean he does not come with his own flaws that could be fatal when that time comes.
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