While most of the country was either watching football or the sad, final innings of a Mets season that started with so much hope (only to end the same way it always does), America’s favorite journeyman center Andre Drummond was having an out-of-body experience.
Drummond, who, as we learned Sunday, plays for the Bulls (his sixth team in three years), put on a three-point clinic against the Raptors, going 3-for-3 from downtown. If you’ve followed Drummond’s career at all, or understand what his role encompasses (even as a part-timer last season, the 6’10,” 280-pound post monster still averaged over nine rebounds per game), this development should floor you. The former lottery pick entered Sunday with 15 threes on 114 lifetime attempts (13.2 percent), about one every 48 games. In fact, he hadn’t made one since 2020, coming up empty on each of his attempts last year and the year before (combined 0-for-11).
Though it used to be like seeing a pink unicorn on ice skates, it’s no longer unusual for big men to sling it from long range with back-to-the-basket centers in the mold of Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan all but extinct in today’s NBA, dying out in favor of “stretch” fours with more developed skill sets (with French seven-footer Victor Wembanyana representing that trend's terrifying final form). Given his career-long struggles from the charity stripe (his 47.3 free-throw percentage is second-lowest in NBA history), it’s unthinkable that Drummond would even attempt a three-pointer, let alone sink three in one game. It’s like if Shaq, guided by either irrational confidence or sheer boredom, decided one day to be a jump shooter and, in defiance of all logic and reason, was actually good at it.
While it’s easy to dismiss Drummond’s sudden three-point barrage as catching lightning in a bottle (you won’t find lower stakes than a sparsely-attended Sunday preseason game in Toronto), the 29-year-old’s fast improvement is admirable, as is his willingness to evolve, not unlike Bucks veteran Brook Lopez, who experienced a similar resurgence when he moved his game out to the perimeter.
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