Ugh... How about some Drummond love?

I missed most of last night's Pistons game, which was for the best. Really. The defense was as bad as it's been all year, turnovers were plentiful (Monroe & Knight combined for 9), and nobody really played well at all. Except Drummond. He had a double-double in his first 10 minutes (Monroe picked up 2 quick fouls in the 1st quarter), although many of his rebounds were of the Moses Malone variety (get a rebound, miss the putback, rebound your miss, etc.).

The less said about that game the better. Brandon Jennings carved up the Pistons for 31 and 6, which underlines Detroit's need for some perimeter defense. Paint defense wasn't great either, mainly because the Pistons did a terrible job defending screens, often leaving the cutter AND a shooter wide open.

On to better things. Grantland's Zach Lowe (a true basketball geek) wrote an article on the "All-Fun All Star Team", and naturally Drummond made the cut as a reserve.

Drummond has some issues with the complexities of big-man NBA defense, but this is no place for complexities. This is a place for outrageous dunks, emphatic shot blocks, alarmingly easy offensive rebounds, and the sort of springiness that should scare the rest of the Eastern Conference. Drummond is already a pick-and-roll threat in the mold of Tyson Chandler, a dunker so dangerous his rolls to the hoop suck defenders far into the lane, opening up things for everyone else. He has helped make Charlie Villanueva and Austin Daye relevant, and worked as perhaps the most important ingredient on surprisingly productive Detroit bench units. The best part is that Drummond still looks as if he's playing with a sort of forced restraint, as if leaping and cutting as hard as he could might rip a hole in the atmosphere.

I couldn't agree more (the bench looked pretty bad last night with Drummond playing mainly with the starters). He looks like he's constantly burning up with energy, waiting to explode for a rebound, a dunk or a block. Eventually he'll learn to control it, and his energy will look like a slow burn with occasional flare ups. Until then, he's going to run out of gas after long stretches and he'll make some mistakes.