The Andre Drummond Thread

[3 Ball...GOT IT]

Its not like this topic keeps me up at night. What is the point of having an Andre Drummond thread if we can't compare him to players on our roster.

I mean it only makes sense for someone to say we should take Drummond over Waiters, then get upset when someone compares the two or others drafted before him...

[RealKingofCleve]

I don't like to compare Drummond to Dion because doing so would require us to compare Drummond to everyone drafted before him. The players that should be in the discussion are players that he was projected to become by his potential or his risk as a bust. Such is Jeremy Tyler, Diop, Thabeet, Jerome James, Ryan Hollins, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, etc....

I don't get your point. If the draft was held today, I think Drummond would be the number 2 pick.

[Lottery God]

No shit. The Cavs would also be in a much better position if they never drafted Luke Jackson.

We passed on Drummond, he was a risky ass player. We got Dion. Deal with it.

That's the ultimate revisionist history by RealKingofCleve to say we should have drafted Klay, Faried, and Drummond. I highly doubt he wanted Klay or Faried on draft night. Honestly, Klay isn't even doing that well this season. He had some great games at the end of the 2011-2012 season, but he's taken a step back since then. Faried has also taken a step back at least statistically this season. His PER has dropped by 2.6 points, and he's still over a year older than Tristan. It's still too early to tell who will be better than who.

On the case of Drummond, he is an interesting prospect. He doesn't have the vertical of Howard although Howard's vertical was not much better than Drummond's when he entered the league. It's through training that gave Howard an extra 5 inches on his vertical. Maybe Drummond can do the same. What separates Drummond as a physical prospect from Howard is his agility and running speed, not to mention how much bigger he is than Howard. Once he gains his NBA size, he might be close to 300.

[blue_kahuna]

I don't get your point. If the draft was held today, I think Drummond would be the number 2 pick.

What I'm trying to say is that the draft is over and done with. I just want to discuss Andre Drummond and his development and how it correlates to the the players he was compared to prior to the draft. Such has Diop, Jeremy Tyler, Thabeet, Kwame, Ryan Hollins, Dwight Howard etc...I don't think it's fair to compare Drummond to Dion because the draft already happened and we can't do anything about. But people like Tornicade seems to think just because some of us like to see Drummond succeed it automatically means, we want Dion to fail lol.

[RealKingofCleve]

What I'm trying to say is that the draft is over and done with. I just want to discuss Andre Drummond and his development and how it correlates to the the players he was compared to prior to the draft. Such has Diop, Jeremy Tyler, Thabeet, Kwame, Ryan Hollins, Dwight Howard etc...I don't think it's fair to compare Drummond to Dion because the draft already happened and we can't do anything about. But people like Tornicade seems to think just because some of us like to see Drummond succeed it automatically means, we want Dion to fail lol.

I am not rooting for Drummond to succeed because he is on the Pistons, and I am definitely rooting for Dion to become a great player. But I think it is fair to compare Drummond to other players in his class, and I think his potential is higher than everyone's but Davis.

And in regards to the revisionist post, I actually loved Faried out of Morehead State. I watched him go beast mode on Lousville and just felt his game translated very well. I didn't love Klay Thompson that much and I still don't, but I would prefer him over Tristan.

[Shack]

I'm not entirely sold on Drummond despite his hot start. What's going on is that there might not be 10 NBA players in history more physically gifted than him. I'm that impressed by his combination of size and mobility. He is a greek god.

But I still think 2/3s of the game is non physical. So Drummond's going to need to add a lot. While Drummond is more physically talented than Deandre Jordan, Javale McGee, Samuel Dalembert, Bismack Biyombo the marginal utility of that athletic difference between Drummond and a Jordan isn't going to be that high. Jordan already gets 90% of what you can on athletic tools alone. And those guys aren't that good. So it's well within reason Drummond only ends up that type of player.

Dwight Howard, while he gets bashed especially this season and has been an overall overrated player most of his career, has somewhat underrated skill and IQ. I would still call Howard's skill level above average for a center. No he's not Shaq or Hakeem and his post game is butt ugly, but he does have excellent touch, nice hooks, is a solid ballhandler. He's also a fairly intelligent player which is half the reason for his defensive impact. The gap between Dwight and Deandre Jordan is still significant in skill and IQ. Maybe Dwight is an unspectacular 6 out of 10 in both categories but Jordan is a 2. The question is which one of those guys Drummond is. I would guess he has Dwight's IQ and Jordan's skill, personally

[Jon]

People just expected Andre to explode and dominate once he hit the NCAA, and when that didn't happen they started ascribing a whole lot of BS to him. It's probably best for him in the long run that expectations fell so low for him, because the pressure of being great has crushed plenty of other young players who had all the tools to have a fine career if they were just allowed to focus on what they do good and grow in to other areas.

His FT% has fallen back and now sits at 40%, so that's still needs a lot of work, but his per36 numbers show a lot of promise.

[Jack Brickman]

I don't get your point. If the draft was held today, I think Drummond would be the number 2 pick.

It's easy to say that now, but no one was saying it on draft night. Perhaps you should change your user name to RealKingofRevisionistHistory?

[RchfldCavRaised]

It's easy to say that now, but no one was saying it on draft night. Perhaps you should change your user name to RealKingofRevisionistHistory?

I said it a few times, simple search turned this up. I was HARDLY the only one.
http://realcavsfans.com/showthread.p...=1#post1378837

[pr26]

I said it a few times, simple search turned this up. I was HARDLY the only one.
http://realcavsfans.com/showthread.p...=1#post1378837

Yeah I was wanting Drummond at 4 if MKG and Beal were off the board.....and plenty of others did too. Not a consensus or anything, but there were plenty. I'm happy with the Dion pick now that I've watched him play and I see his potential, but I wasn't happy at the time.

[TheISHT]

Yeah I was wanting Drummond at 4 if MKG and Beal were off the board.....and plenty of others did too. Not a consensus or anything, but there were plenty. I'm happy with the Dion pick now that I've watched him play and I see his potential, but I wasn't happy at the time.

Same here....If Beal and MKG were gone.

[blue_kahuna]

It's easy to say that now, but no one was saying it on draft night. Perhaps you should change your user name to RealKingofRevisionistHistory?

Do some research before you make broad and false statements. I said way before the draft that he should've been the #2 pick. I'm pretty sure there were a handful of people that agreed with me but didn't want to go on the record. And there was a minority that felt we should have drafted him if he was still on the board.

[Scholar]

It's easy to say that now, but no one was saying it on draft night. Perhaps you should change your user name to RealKingofRevisionistHistory?

Sorry, Jack, there were more then a few of us that actually wanted Drummond. Now, you'll notice that I don't complain that we didn't take him even though he is the player I wanted. I can see why they took Waiters. I still would have preferred Andre. But, at least, I can see what they saw.

I am actually really concerned that he is going to be taken at 2. Dreading it. He is the one player outside of Davis that has the possibility of really being special. We can talk about the others that would be very good players. But, not game changers like Andre could be. Even if he only maximizes his talent on the defensive side of the ball, that forces other teams to have to plan around him. An effect like Howard has. The part of his game where he actually showed up in his freshman year was his defense. He apparently likes that part of basketball. He is very good at covering the P&R. It is definitely not unreasonable to expect him to at least be good at what he is already good at. But, go ahead and keep hating. Keep making comparisons to players who are not really similar.

[Len]

It's easy to say that now, but no one was saying it on draft night. Perhaps you should change your user name to RealKingofRevisionistHistory?

, every name you see posting in this Andre Drummond thread was on board and voiced their opinion about taking Drummond for months prior to draft night. I can think of only maybe one person who wasn't shocked when we took Dwait on draft night. He didn't even have a Thread soley related to Dion such as "A Closer Look: Dion Waiters" until after we drafted him, so.

I am now happy we have Dion, and only semi-bitter we don't have Drummond.

[ArchieBunker7]

Ya, I remember all these guys wanting Drummond. I was/am a huge proponent of MKG for a lot of the same reasons I was not for Drummond. But, to Drummond, I still believe CG sees TT as his starting PF for years to come and may have had questions about his fitting next to a guy like Drummond. Drummond is definitely more dominant at what he does than TT is, but there games seem to overlap quite a bit in style. The thought of them both in a close game in the 4thQ is nightmarish.

Mind you, this is not coming from a TT guy, so I'm just trying to put myself in Grant's shoes for a minute. It's almost like picking Drummond would have been sort of an admission about TT...and a bit of redundancy. Again, not that I agree with the approach, but I could see that being his reasoning.