Andre Drummond was featured in an article by ESPN covering what P3–a science based athletic training facility–found based on their tests of Drummond. The results? Andre Drummond is the most athletic big man in the NBA.
Andre Drummond is a freak athletically. He might not be as tall as Shaquille O’Neal or You Ming, and he might not have a 40-inch vertical, but his combination of size, anticipation, and quickness is unrivaled according to what P3’s scientists have discovered.
Below are some of the findings. I strongly encourage you to read the article in it’s entirety.
"More than 100 NBA big men have walked through the doors at P3 — a former disco dance hall nestled about a football field away from the shores of Santa Barbara — to get tested for their biomechanics and to optimize their movement patterns. None of them, according to P3’s scientists, walked out of there having checked more boxes on their assessment than Drummond.“He checks off all the same boxes that the perimeter players do,” says Dr. Marcus Elliott, the founder and lead scientist at P3. “That’s super rare for a big man. You almost never have a guy that big who’s comparable to a 200-pound guy. There’s usually a give back.”Van Gundy read the charts that detailed Drummond’s performance data. And what he learned was jaw-dropping.It’s not just that Drummond has a high vertical (30 inches) and generates more force in the vertical plane when he jumps than 90 percent of all P3 athletes. It’s not just that he moves laterally better than 87 percent of all NBA players tested — guards included. It’s not just that his second jump is lightning-quick and it rises four inches higher than his positional mean. The baffling thing? He does all of these things and more.“Drummond has what we call a big jump vocabulary, meaning he can jump in a whole lot of different ways really well,” Elliott says. “We get some athletes who are amazing jumpers that are in a really limited setting. If things are set up just right for them, they’re freaks. Drummond will go off two legs, he’ll go off his right leg, left leg, right leg on an angle, left leg on an angle, all those things, he does it exceptionally well.”“He can be as good as his ability to learn basketball,” Elliott says. “He’s got nothing holding him back to him being the best big man in the NBA, period. If we can keep him healthy, that’s the situation.”"
Those last two lines are particularly exciting for Pistons’ fans, and at the same time, a bit frustrating.
Let’s start with the obvious–the P3 guys are obviously going to be a bit biased given that Drummond is one of their client’s. Still, the same time, the results speak for themselves.
What’s important is that Drummond makes the most of his athletic ability. I think he does that with his offseason training–but that’s only a piece of the puzzle.
The other piece–and it’s a big one–is the effort Drummond gives night in and night out which is inconsistent at best.
When Drummond is psychologically invested in games, he dominants. When he isn’t, he still makes an impact, but it’s no where near what he’s capable off.
What these findings tell me is that Drummond has no excuses–he needs to be the best center in the league. He’s clearly capable of that.
As Drummond matures and learn the nuances of the game, I think we will begin to see a dominant player on each an every night–but he’s got to want to be great.