Considering their need for another centre and the price, it's a worthwhile roll of the dice for the Lakers. After all, it's rare for two-time All-Stars in their late 20s to be available on the buyout market at this point of the NBA calendar. Does it still have the potential to work? Absolutely. So it is the cleanest of fits? Not exactly. As long as he buys in and plays with effort, he should be fine. The Lakers already have the league's best defensive rating, so they're not expecting Drummond to transform them. Drummond has his limitations on defence, but he's a more active defender than Gasol at this stage of his career - Drummond has always posted some of the best block and steal rates at the centre position, this season being no exception - and he's far better suited to match up with the league's best centres than Harrell, which will come in handy should the Lakers face Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid or Rudy Gobert in the playoffs. The other end of the court isn't much different.
He's already an established player, but cutting some of the bad tendencies out of his game and proving that he can contribute to a contender could set the tone for the next part of his career, whether it's in Los Angeles or somewhere else. It'll mostly come down to how willing Drummond is to sacrifice and adapt.ĭrummond should have plenty of motivation to show up with this being a contract year. He hasn't even been an efficient scorer as the roll man or off of cuts for most of his career - again, he doesn't have the best touch around the basket and he can force the issue - but he's never played with a playmaker like LeBron and the Lakers should have enough shooting to open up the floor for him to focus on rim-running. Ideally, Drummond would be a supercharged version of McGee and Howard, giving the Lakers an athletic centre who is relentless attacking the offensive glass and provides the type of vertical spacing they don't currently have in Howard and Montrezl Harrell. Unless he's the centrepiece of bench-heavy lineups, it's hard to imagine him getting anywhere near the same opportunities to create for himself with the Lakers. It would be one thing if he was a good post-up scorer, but he's once again struggled with efficiency, ranking in the 29th percentile with 0.82 points per possession. It'll be interesting to see how else Drummond's game changes with the Lakers because he's used to having a decent amount of the offence run through him, mostly out of the post.Īccording to NBA.com, Drummond is averaging 5.4 post-up possessions per game this season, the fourth-most in the league. His defender will have to think twice about helping off of him when either one of them has the ball and switches will lead to favourable mismatches for him underneath the basket. Playing next to LeBron James and Anthony Davis should lead to even more offensive rebounds for Drummond because of the amount of attention each one of them commands. The combination makes him someone teams have to account for at all times, otherwise they run the risk of him sneaking his way into the paint and clearing out space. Not only is Drummond a massive presence around the basket, standing at 6-foot-10 and 279 pounds with a reported 7-foot-5 wingspan, he has a nose for the ball. His 4.0 offensive rebounds per game rank third behind Clint Capela (5.1) and Enes Kanter (4.3). The second is this season, although he's still among the league leaders. The first time was 2012-13, when he was a rookie. Since entering the NBA, there's only been two seasons in which Drummond hasn't averaged the most offensive rebounds in the league.
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