Lots of passion about this topic - I love it.
The “empty stat” to which I was referring, less specifically than necessary, is rebounding. I think rebounding can be an insanely misleading statistic, personally. There are rebound hunters in the league who actually hurt their team on 3 out of 5 possessions just to add rebounds on the other two by not applying good team-rebounding fundamentals. It’s kind of similar to the phenomenon in football where a defensive lineman goes for a flashy sack or tackle instead of occupying blockers to keep the linebackers free.
We saw a player like this a lot for the first half of the season last year, and watching this game, I was reminded at times of that player. That’s really the only thing I meant with the DJ comparison. While I will maintain that Drummond had an overall negative impact on this game defensively, I won’t go so far as to compare him to Jordan’s barely pretending to try style of pick and roll D in Dallas last year.
It’s also true Luka/KP were amazing in this game, so good point, and that I haven’t watched Drummond a lot recently. This is the first time this year, in fact. But...idk. I see the Pistons’ record, and I see KP whoop him off the dribble like he hasn’t been able to against pretty much anyone else this year (so far) and I see causality. I could very well be wrong.
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