Andre Drummond

From Jeannette's book:

Another text comes through, this one from the guy I’m currently stringing along. Current Guy (Andre Drummond) and I “met” via Twitter. We arranged to meet up in person. I invited some friends so I wouldn’t get murdered. Once I knew he was safe to be around, we went to fancy dinners and laser tag and minigolf. We even went to Disneyland together to watch the reworks. (I splurged on a VIP guide so we wouldn’t stop any parades and piss off Goofy.)

That’s where I’m at right now with Current Guy. The distraction has been nice, but I’m ready for a replacement.

I whip out my phone to check the text from him.

What are you up too?

I’m no stickler on spelling but Jesus Christ get your “tos” right. That’s it. I’m ready to end things. I draft a text.

Hey—I’m really sorry but I just can’t do this right now. My mom’s gonna die and I really need some time to just be alone. I hope you can understand.

Send. Done. Simple as that. I look back up at my dying mother. A text pings.

Don’t say that, boo. Your mom’s not gonna die.

He ignores the rest of my message. I roll my eyes. I’ve told him twelve times that Mom’s dying of cancer but he acts like she has a sprained ankle. He has no concept of loss. I feel like the world is divided into two types of people: people who know loss and people who don’t. And whenever I encounter someone who doesn’t, I disregard them.

Mom takes a sharp breath in, then out. The hospice nurse locks eyes with Dad, gives a slight nod. Dad looks at us. Mom’s gone. We’re all numb. We don’t cry. We just sit. In silence. Finally, I pick up my phone. A hundred messages have poured in. Everyone’s heard. E! News broke the story. How the fuck they already know, I have no idea.

I go to my text tab, then click on the chain with Current Guy. I stare at his last text: Don’t say that, boo. Your mom’s not gonna die.

I text him back: She just did.

After his Flagrant 2 that caused his ejection, he finished with a plus/minus of -45 in only 26 minutes, beating Draymond Green's record of -43.

In terms of total rebound percentage (i.e., the percentage of rebounds a player grabs when he’s on the court), the single-season record of 29.73 set by Dennis Rodman back in 1994-95 has seemed pretty unbreakable. Nobody has even come within 3% — Reggie Evans is No. 2 on the list with a 26.67 mark back in 2012-13.

Well, last year Andre Drummond hit 29.6%, but didn’t play enough minutes to qualify. This year he’s on track to register enough minutes, and is putting up an incredible 30.1% mark.

Here’s where it gets very good for Bulls fans: Drummond is actually the career leader in total rebound % at 24.97% (a full 1.5% higher than Rodman, and likely 2-3% higher than Wilt and Russell — we don’t have exact number but ). So he’ll probably keep up the monster rebounding even if I think it’s unlikely he breaks Rodman’s single-season mark.

However, as a younger player his monster rebounding numbers often came at the expense of the team as a whole. It wasn’t unusual for Detroit to be a better rebounding team, collectively, when Drummond sat than when he was on the court. And that was also reflected in pure on/off numbers, as the Pistons usually had a better net rating overall when Drummond was on the bench.

It’s not entirely fair — there are a lot of factors at play in on/off stats, and those Pistons teams were not well-constructed — but that is why a guy who’s put up such massive box score numbers has bounced around so much.

Since coming to Chicago last year, though, things have changed:

In 2022-23, the Bulls’ total rebound percentage with Drummond on the floor was 51.8%, which was 3% better than when he was off. Their net rating with him in the lineup was +3.2, which was 2 points better than when he sat.

Now, I think some of that has to do with him beating up on bench mobs. Who you’re facing matters.

But Drummond is starting now and is playing the best ball of his career, and it’s showing up in the numbers. When he’s on the court this season Chicago’s total rebound percentage is 54.3%, which is massive (the Wolves with Gobert on the court are at 54%; Denver with Jokic are at 52.5%), and their net rating with him out there is +1.9 as opposed to -4.1 when he’s not. That +6.0 mark is the third-best of his career, and since he’s entered the starting 5 it’s actually been climbing. So it's not about beating up on bench mobs anymore.

I do expect some regression to the mean in the weeks and months ahead, but I don’t think what we’re seeing from him individually & the Bulls collectively should be chalked up as a fluke. He’s getting his numbers and for the second straight year he’s doing so in a way that unambiguously benefits the team.

For a guy that so many wrote off, it’s nice to see this kind of late-career renaissance.

EDIT: I should say that all the above numbers are taken from .