Cavs: Andre Drummond’s performance vs. Pacers was big for him

Andre Drummond had his best game as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday versus the Indiana Pacers, and that was much-needed for him.

Andre Drummond is still adjusting to his new-ish team in the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that’s understandable. He spent nearly eight seasons with the Detroit Pistons, the team that drafted him in 2012.

Of course, as Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor highlighted, and as Drummond has essentially alluded to, it will take some time for Drummond to mesh with his Cavs’ teammates, such as Kevin Love, Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, Cedi Osman, Kevin Porter Jr. and others.

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Coming into Saturday’s game, Drummond, as Fedor emphasized, was not a part of key fourth quarter stretches in the Cavs’ victories at the Washington Wizards and in a thrilling comeback over the Miami Heat, both of which KJG’s Corey Casey hit on.

Along with that, Drummond missed Cleveland’s previous two games, which resulted in a win over the shorthanded Philadelphia 76ers and a loss at the New Orleans Pelicans. Dre was sidelined due to a reported left calf strain.

Anyhow, with the Cavs so far, Drummond has not started off too well. In six games with Cleveland, he’s had 15.2 points, 10.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game, as noted by Basketball Reference.

Those numbers on the surface have been solid, but Drummond, as a traditional center, has not seemed to fit in just yet with also recently J.B. Bickerstaff taking over as head coach, which again, I can understand with Drummond changing teams midseason.

That’s played into the big man having a net rating of minus-25.4 and a turnover ratio of 19.2 percent with the Cavaliers, according to NBA.com.

However, the Cavaliers still need to see what they have in the 26-year-old Drummond, who potentially could pick up his $28.8 million player option for next season, and I would imagine he would with so few teams looking to have a considerable amount of cap space this summer.

Moreover, on Saturday, Drummond had by far his best game as a Cavalier yet, and that was much-needed for him to hopefully to get rolling more.

He had 27 points on 12-of-21 shooting, to go with 13 rebounds, four assists and a block. Additionally, his four steals definitely contributed to the Cavs having 22 fastbreak points versus Indiana, as indicated by ESPN.

Swinging back to the offensive end, though, Drummond had it working down low in matchups often against Myles Turner.

In those instances with Turner as the primary defender, Drummond had 17 points on eight-of-11 shooting, according to NBA.com’s player matchup data. This bucket was also particularly impressive by Dre.

Turner did block Drummond twice on Saturday, but by and large, Dre was effective against Turner on the interior. Plus, in the game, it was nice to see Drummond have four assists as well, including this great one to Kevin Love (who led Cleveland with seven assists), who then paid it forward by throwing Drummond a heck of an outlet pass in transition right after, too.

While the Pacers ended up getting some switchouts with the likes of Victor Oladipo and T.J. Warren on to Drummond at the other end, playing a role in Drummond being a minus-18 in the game, Drummond’s interior scoring and rebounding still led to him having a productive outing.

That was against a formidable Indiana squad with two very skilled bigs in 2020 All-Star Domantas Sabonis and Turner, too.

Cleveland would concede 30 points to Warren, who had 14 points against Drummond in those aforementioned switchouts, according to NBA.com’s matchup data again, and Warren also had six assists in the game, which even though it was a tight game most of the way, the Pacers would end up winning 113-104.

Malcolm Brogdon and Oladipo made their presences felt, too, but on the bright side, Sexton did hold his own versus Oladipo, as he only conceded five points when he was Oladipo’s primary defender and he also didn’t allow Oladipo to have an assist when guarding him.

At any rate, it was big for Drummond and good to see for him to get it going more, especially after he missed the Cleveland Cavaliers’ last two games.

The Cavs will need another nice outing form Dre on Monday against Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and the Utah Jazz, who are currently the fifth seed in the Western Conference.