After Stan Van Gundy indicated that everything was on the table for Andre Drummond to improve his free-throw shooting, it looks like one thing has come off that table.
Andre Drummond had a breakout 2015-16 season, leading the NBA in rebounds and setting career highs in both scoring and rebounding. He averaged 16.2 points, 13.8 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game. However, there was something amiss in that outstanding campaign.
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In spite of his great counting numbers, Drummond was abysmal from the free throw line at a historic level, hitting just 35.5 percent of his shots from the charity stripe.
This level of ineptitude caused him to be a liability late in games as teams would intentionally foul him and make the Pistons decide between leaving him in the game and completely stall the offense or pulling him out and thus eliminating one of the most dominant interior forces in the NBA.
After the season, Pistons’ head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy stated that everything was on the table when it came to improving Drummond’s free throw shooting.
"“As far as shooting underhand or anything else, it’s fair to say my discussion with Andre yesterday and the discussions Jeff and I have had and staff — everything is on the table,” Van Gundy said Thursday during the season wrap-up at The Palace.“It won’t be a unilateral decision; we’ll do some research on some things and come up with what we think is a good approach, talk to Andre and see what he thinks and develop an approach going forward.“We all know it’s an important thing — Andre more than any of us – he’s pretty open to anything. There’s a lot of ways to attack this problem and we’ll all have a hand in it.”"
It was even suggested that after a long time of being completely unwilling to shoot free throws underhanded, he may even be willing to change his tune and try it in-game.
Turns out that was incorrect.
In an interview this past weekend with the Hartford Courant, Drummond told reporter Dom Amore that we will not be seeing a change in his shooting form.
"Drummond continues to work on free throws, along with his footwork, though he dismisses any suggestion he should try shooting them underhand.“I’m just really just continuing to work on back-to-the-basket stuff,” he said, “and working on getting better from the foul line. I’m going to stick with the formula I have now.”"
That formula hasn’t been particularly successful for Drummond thus far, but if he’s stumbled across something that is working, as he hinted at his contract-extension press conference, maybe there’s still hope for his free throw shooting.
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In the meantime, if Andre Drummond is working on his post game, that’s another vital weapon the young phenom can improve upon in order to continue to craft himself into being one of the best big men in the NBA.