Andre Drummond Is A Sixer!

Marc Gasol’s stats in games 5 & 6 combined: played 28 minutes, 5 points, 6 rebounds, 1 block, 0 steals and 9 fouls. His supporters will point to his 8 assists in our 30 and 13 point losses though.

udleyshrug:

 

I really don't get all the Gasol love. He sure made no difference starting game 5.

 

That's my point, and some go to great lengths, to explain away this kind of production , by talking about " things that don't show up in the box score". Then try to diminish anything Drummond does with " but his hands, he missed a dunk," etc.

 

A lot of debates when traditional centers should not matter with AD on this roster , well they mainly didn't in the 2020 playoffs .

The FO should be more focused on adding one or a couple of more mobile bigs to play the 5 who can catch a lob during the regular season instead of absolute spacing killers/slow bigs like Drummond .

I'm fine with the McGee and Cauley Stein of this world

 

Most Laker fans would widely agree that Robert Sacre was one of the worst centers in franchise history. The link below shows Gasol’s season stats compared to Sacre’s best season in 2013-14. They’re virtually identical with Gasol playing more minutes per game than Sacre. Am I saying Marc Gasol wasn’t a great talent over the span of his career? Absolutely not. But I am saying that the Marc Gasol we got this season is a shell of himself. Many Raptors fans were saying he was pretty much done and the numbers pan that out. Just seems there’s a lot of slandering Drummond to make Marc look better than he was in reality to me. I’m not the greatest Drummond fan in the world, but the amount of comparison slander he gets on here with Gasol is silly.
https://stathead.com/tiny/tIDkd

 

I agree. Any mistake Drummond makes, some are all over it. Gasol gets a free pass all season for anything he did wrong. No complaints about getting covid at a critical time in the season etc..He was a fantastic big 3 years ago. He is just about done. Too slow. We do need an agile big off the bench like a WCS. I would rather roll with a young Drummond then an Old Gasol next year. Drummond will have a full camp. Moreover, he never had a chance to play with a healthy AD and Lebron. I really want to see how that will play out.

 

Stein confirmed what we all already knew...

 

seriously, i know i've harped on it since the day it happened, but that was just really lame of our FO. worst thing we've done since magic was drunkenly destroying our team after lebron got here.

 

Think Marc asks for a buyout?

I don't think he comes back.

 

Why? You don't think they would start Drummond with a healthy AD?

 

We shouldn't have signed Gasol's washed butt in the first place. The dude was finished in Toronto. Slow as an iceberg and getting old, neither will change in the off-season.

 

if nobody plays that way, why employ a bruiser at all?

one marc gasol, one mcgee, zero drummonds, and you're fine.

i think so. he'll join the nets and help them win a lot like helped us before everyone got hurt.

yeah, his part in the league's best 5-man unit is something we should have filled with...i'm not sure what...

 

I think he might retire. Go to Spain and play with Pau for FC Barcelona.

 

both the DS promise and this really seemed to negatively impact the chemistry of the team. I give Drummond credit as there was no reports of any negativity from him when his minutes were cut but the way the minutes were allocated certainly gave the impression that they were trying push a square peg into a round hole over and over again once AD returned

 

His part in the league's best 5 man is as ridiculous as saying the exact same thing about Javale's part last season.

 

well, since javale mcgee was the savior we were missing, i guess it says a lot? point is: nothing really supports the gasol haters claims except lazy counting stats.

only 4 rebounds! don't care. we played better with him on the floor much of the year.

 

Comparing Gasol to Sacre is crazy to me, and stats are irrelevant in the discussion. Gasol had inconsistent playing time and was not asked to be a big time scorer. The way he facilitated the offense, spaced the floor, and provided solid interior defense against certain matchups is not going to be apparent if you just look at PPG and RPG.

With that said, you are absolutely spot on with pointing out the Drummond thing. In a way, Drummond may have been the best thing to happen to Gasol in the sense that he became the obvious scapegoat and it made people look at Gasol much more favorably in comparison.

I’d go as far as saying that Schröder has done the same with Caruso/THT.

Everyone hates Drummond and Schröder so there is an inclination to think “See, if we just played Gasol and Caruso all those minutes we would have been fine”.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Gasol/Caruso/THT, but the fanbase has started to overrate them all and not considering their legitimate flaws. If for example we continued to start Marc and just kept Damian Jones as a back-up, the season wouldn’t have shaked out any differently but there would be a lot more slander coming Marc’s way (not that it would necessarily be justified). People forget that the reason we were so eager to get Drummond was that it became clear that Marc was not good enough at his age for us to depend on him as our primary center. (I don’t consider our great record early in the season as good evidence against this).

Overall, I like Marc and think he has a place for us as our back-up center. In a parallel universe where everyone is healthy, maybe Drummond is fine in that staring role... but I’d prefer to cut ties and sign a cheaper more athletic lob finisher.

 

yes, injuries would have doomed us anyway, and yes people would have blamed gasol then. but they said he sucked when we were 21-6 (and he didn't). and i didn't want drummond. i wanted dieng or some other backup because i saw that we were fine playing gasol despite the fans' constant whining about him. fans just like to whine about people, and he was literally a big target.

thus, i don't understand the bolded part. what would have constituted evidence then? an undefeated record with him being the highest rated player in the league? he was a vet min signing to start and play 18-20mpg, and he was doing that just fine. we needed a backup who could swat and catch lobs or just eat up minutes and fouls.

i also disagree that schroder makes AC look better. AC looked great last year and all year this year. it's not a contrast effect. he plays winning basketball and schroder doesn't. just like drummond doesn't.