Detroit Pistons replay center: How Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond feed off each other

Blake Griffin’s gravity

Think of gravity as the probability a player will attract multiple defenders when he has the ball or force his defender to stay with him off the ball. Well, when Griffin has the ball, he has the gravity of Jupiter, and Drummond, like the Earth, enjoys a clear comet-free sky.

Griffin is the Pistons main offensive threat. No shocker. In fact, he was such a good scorer this year that all defensive eyes were on him. To a ridiculous level.

The biggest difference compared to previous years was Griffin’s ability to score from range. He’s making 35.8% of his four pull up 3-point shots per game. That’s huge for a player his size that never even attempted that many shots of that type in his entire career. It was the reason Jae Crowder bit on that fake leaving Rudy Gobert in a terrible situation of defending the give-and-go.

It was the reason Capela had to switch here to take it away, leaving James Harden guarding a much bigger Drummond inside the paint.

On drives, he was a force to be reckoned with as he scored 1.29 points per attempt with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons being the only big men that outperformed him in volume. Even in confined spaces, he was able to draw rim protectors on him and feed a trailing Drummond with pocket passes and wrap around’s.

Any time Griffin drives to the basket, he’s going to get multiple defenders trying to stop him and that opens up passing lanes for Drummond near the rim.

He’s worked his perimeter skills to a point where he can use the threat of his range and his ball handling to get to the rim where he can use his size and finish ability to put pressure on the rim and find quick passes for Drummond to finish inside.

Again, and I cannot stretch this enough, putting pressure on the defense early goes a long way. Griffin creates all kinds of havoc when he pushes the ball. Before the defense sets, it’s impossible to match up correctly and Griffin can use that advantage to draw attention.

On post-ups, all eyes are on him and Drummond can use his agility to sneakily find himself behind the defense for easy finishes. When the timing is there beautiful things happen and more familiarity with the passage of time should mean more easy buckets like this.

Even against elite competition, the two can find good shots. Al Horford shadows Griffin on this play and Drummond finds the right time to cut baseline to receive a beautifully timed pass. More work needs to be done on finishing near the rim but those are generally good looks for any center.

Now let’s take a look at the passing ability.