If you want to start a debate with a fan of the Detroit Pistons, just bring up Andre Drummond and choose a side.
Drummond is one of the most polarizing players in Pistons’ history, as he racked up rebounds and some individual accolades but the teams he was on didn’t enjoy much success. Drummond played 7+ seasons for the Pistons, making two All-Star teams and leading the league in rebounding four times.
He played 591 games for Detroit, averaging 14.4 points, 13.9 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game, setting several all-time Pistons’ records in the process.
But the team went just 257-334 in the Andre Drummond era, had just one winning season, and didn’t win a single playoff game, so it’s hard to call his time with the Pistons anything other than a disaster from a team perspective.
Drummond is a one-dimensional center with little offensive game and mediocre defense, so part of the team’s lack of success falls on his failure to evolve with a rapidly-changing center position in the NBA.
But more of the failure falls on the team, who decided to build around a rebounder (great idea!), failed to recognize the changing nature of the NBA and never put very good, or complementary teams around Andre Drummond, who played with many players that were not starting caliber.
Here are the seven worst, ranked from best to worst. For the purposes of this, I only chose players who started at least 20 games in the season.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#7: Wayne Ellington, 2028-19
Ellington actually had a couple of good seasons with the Detroit Pistons, and had he just been a sharpshooter coming off the bench, would have been fine. But he started all but two games he played for Detroit this season and the 31-year-old wasn’t a starting caliber two-guard. He mostly just launched a lot of 3-point shots, hitting 37 percent of them, so again, Ellington wasn’t terrible. Detroit did go to the playoffs that season after finishing 41-41, a record that is a pretty good indication of some of the mediocrity in the starting lineup.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#6: Ersan Ilyasova, 2015-16
Remember this guy? One of the many mediocre players that Stan Van Gundy tried to use as a stretch and floor spacer during the Andre Drummond era. Ilyasova was another guy who wasn’t terrible and probably should have been a role player on a good team instead of a key part of the rotation of an ok one.
This team did go 44-38, the only winning season of Drummond’s career with the Pistons, with Ilyasova starting 52 games and averaging 11 points and five rebounds per contest, hardly eye-popping numbers. He was a stretch who shot 36 percent from 3-point range, not terrible, but not exactly forcing defenders away from the hoop to defend him.
The Pistons were eventually swept in the first round of the playoffs, namely because they came up against LeBron James and had to defend him with a 19-year-old rookie and a slew-footed power forward named Ersan.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#5: Josh Smith, 2013-14
I am sure there are some who would put Smith as the worst player on this list and they would have an argument. I chose to put him higher just because he might have been ok had he been in a better situation. Of all the players the Pistons tried to use around Drummond, Josh Smith was one of the worst ideas and the results were completely predictable.
As the rest of the league was starting to turn towards 3-point shooting and bigs who could step away from the hoop, the Pistons doubled down on the 90’s and tried to build around three bigs who couldn’t shoot at all.
Detroit won just 29 games this season trying to use Drummond, Greg Monroe and Josh Smith together, with Smith leading the team in minutes, as well as backboards broken with bricks. He shot just 26 percent from long range and is the Pistons’ all-time leader in drawing “NOOOOOOOOO’s!!” from fans as he launched a shot.
Smith was a step slower and had lost some bounce from his time in Atlanta, where he was consistently good. What the Pistons got was an ill-fitting, brick chucker who was a terrible fit with what they already had and will go down as one of the worst free-agent signings in team history.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#4: Stanley Johnson, 2017-18
Stanley Johnson had a promisiing rookie season and it looked like he was going to be the two-way forward the Pistons had been looking for since Tayshaun Prince. The drought continued, as the “Stanimal” was never able to put it together on the offensive end.
Johnson was a good defender, but his offense was so bad that it didn’t matter, as he put just eight points and three rebounds per game while shooting an abysmal 37 percent from the floor and 28 percent from the 3-point line.
Detroit won 39 games in this season, which is the one where it started be become apparent that Johnson was never going to be able to shoot.
It’s too bad, because fans were cheering for the guy, but he just couldn’t figure it out. What started with the 8th pick and a lot of promise ended with Johnson being unceremoniously given away in a trade.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#3: Tony Snell, 2019-20
This was the final season Andre Drummond played with the Detroit Pistons, as he was traded at the deadline for a bag of used basketballs.
This was the beginning of the tank that has carried on until the present day (hopefully to end next season), evidenced by the fact that Tony Snell was in the starting lineup for 57 games, which you don’t do unless you are trying to lose.
Snell averaged just eight points, and though he did shoot well from the 3-point line, it was literally all he could do. There were times I would forget that Snell was even on the floor, as if he wasn’t shooting a corner 3-point shot, he pretty much didn’t exist.
This worst part is that this team had made the playoffs the year before and actually entered the season with hopes of doing it again. Unfortunately, Blake Griffin was cooked and surrounded by mediocre veterans like Snell and young busts like Sekou Doumbouya.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#2: Kyle Singler, 2012-13, 2014-15
Singler is the only player with the dubious honor of being the worst starter to play with Drummond in two different seasons.
Singler also has the honor of being a part of one of the worst draft classes in Pistons’ history, symbolic of the reason they have been bad for so long.
The Singler teams ranged from just below average to terrible and he managed to average just 8.7 points, 3.5 rebounds in the 218 games he played for Detroit.
One of the hallmarks of the Drummond era (other than losing and going through coaches like tissue paper) was the Pistons going after “shooting” and ending up with these unathletic white dudes like Singler, Ilyasova, Luke Kennard and the last name on this list.
Drummond’s limitations constantly had the Pistons reaching for fit instead of just taking the best player available in drafts, a strategy that will lead to exactly one winning season in 8 years and zero playoff wins.
Ranking the 7 worst Pistons starters of the Andre Drummond era
#1: Jon Leuer
Of all the horrible signings that Stan Van Gundy made in his tenure in Detroit, Jon Leuer has to be the worst. He was one in a long tradition of Pisotns overpaying players that no one else wanted, essentially bidding against themselves. See Bagley, Marvin for a current example.
This was another case of the Pistons looking for a stretch to put around Drummond and instead getting a mediocre player who couldn’t defend or stretch much of anything but the band of his underwear.
Leuer, the “stretch” four, shot 29 percent from long range, couldn’t defend a traffic cone and this was his best season with the team, as he at least averaged 10 points per game. He’d be on this list more, but this was the only season he got enough starts to be eligible. This season seemed to end whatever confidence Leuer had in his shot, as he mysteriously just stopped shooting 3-pointers after this as if he were traumatized. It would make sense, as we were all traumatized watching him play on a mediocre team that won 37 games, just bad enough to miss the playoffs, but not bad enough to get a good draft pick.
That was the story of the Drummond era, as the team leaned too heavily on a one-dimensional player who was just good enough to keep them in NBA purgatory. Couple that with a bunch of egregious draft misses and some of the worst free-agent signings in team history, and you have the Andre Drummond era.