Reminder That Andre Drummond Is on the Sixers Now and It's Wonderful
Really, there's only one thing left to do with the Sixers at this point in the summer, and that's to remember true things about them that are funny.
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Well, we are now at that deadest of dead zones of the NBA offseason -- too long past the start of the actual action to expect anything exciting to still happen, too far removed from the start of the season to actually start looking forward to anything. Summer League has long since passed, preseason is still three weeks away, and Brian Windhorst is now going door-to-door trying to shock people with blank NBA gossip mad libs. Try to talk yourself into Ben Simmons trade rumors picking up steam if you really have to -- I won't judge, we've all been there -- but most of us are too sick of hearing that engine-sputter sound to keep watching the keys getting stuck in the ignition at this point. Brutal out here is indeed what it is.
Really, there's only one thing left to do with the Sixers at this point in the summer, and that's to remember true things about them that are funny. And nothing about the Sixers is currently funnier or truer than the fact that they signed Andre Drummond to a minimum contract in the offseason.
Andre Drummond being on the Sixers as their minimum backup center is hilarious for any number of reasons, but I'll admit the most obvious one didn't even hit me at first. Yes, Andre Drummond has been (and ostensibly still was) a primary on-court rival of Joel Embiid, one who JoJo took great pleasure in dismantling both on and off the court, memorably celebrating the rent-stabilized space he occupied inside Drummond's cranium. But the rivalry always seemed pretty one-sided, in all meaningful ways: Embiid was the primary instigator, agitator and victor in the feud. It's unclear if Drummond particularly cared about it, because it's long been unclear what, if anything, Drummond actually does really care about; his Basketball-Reference pic could be replaced by a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and you'd scarcely know the difference.
What's more, Drummond's fade from relevance in recent years has made his feud with Embiid particularly juiceless. Though Drummond's stats have remained relatively consistent year-over-year, his empty compilation of said numbers and lack of anything even vaguely resembling meaningful NBA success has made his reputation drop to the point where even in fantasy drafts, he routinely gets picked after a glut of first- and second-year stretches because come on dude do you really want to have to spend all season rooting for Andre Drummond? Meanwhile, Embiid has gone head-to-head against him exactly once over the last two seasons, the two routinely passing each other like very tall ships in the night, with no apparent motivation to add another chapter to their thinly storied history together. I wouldn't be shocked if Embiid himself was confused about everyone laughing following the announcement of Drummond's signing, too.
Still, I actually came to like watching Drummond at the height of his NBA obsolescence. I ranked him as my No. 10 favorite non-Sixer to watch in the league last year, writing, "I think it's sort of fun watching Drummond on this Cavs team, scoring and rebounding a lot and doing way too much on offense and blocking Jarret Allen in the starting lineup and just generally fucking around with a 'yeah I don't get why I got left here either, but Imma do me until someone comes and gets me' smirk on his face." Drummond kinda made sense as a Left Behind big man, unsure of when or if the rapture was coming for him but absolutely committed to maximum fucking around until he found out.
What he made less sense as was a Missing Piece to the Championship Puzzle -- which was, hilariously, what he was cast as in his very next role, as a much-coveted buyout signing for the Los Angeles Lakers to occupy the gaping hole at their pivot position. Honestly, I don't really even remember what specifically happened after that -- the Lakers lost in the first round obviously, but partly as a result of the entire NBA postseason being deeply sports-traumatic for me, my memory of Drummond's involvement in that season-ending run consists of one sideline meme and a whole lot of SCENE MISSING placards. Basketball-Reference tells me he put up Andre Drummond-like numbers for them in the regular season before proving increasingly ineffective in the playoffs and getting benched for their elimination game; sounds about right.
But now he is back with the Sixers, in perhaps his best-cast role to date: Makeshift Dwight Howard. Honestly, it is tough to oversell how perfect and hilarious a replacement Andre Drummond is for our departed Dwight -- you could not choose a better actor in the entire league for the understudy casting call of "prodigiously gifted and once overrated but now generally disliked and disregarded center; love of counting stats preferred, hatred of attention to detail a must." (DeAndre Jordan admittedly a close second, perhaps we'll see him next year.) Daryl's landing of Drummond on a veteran's minimum is certainly a win in terms of cap management, but it's an absolute coup in terms of narrative symmetry.
Will Drummond actually help the Sixers win games, though? I think so, probably. Mostly the same late-season games against the OKC/Cleveland types during the regular season that don't provide any true test of character that Dwight helped us win, but games nonetheless. The main reason folks seemed apprehensive about the Drummond signing was that they were worried about Doc playing him too much in the playoffs -- which will almost definitely happen if we get there with him in tow -- but that's only really a major problem if Simmons is also still around, which basically means we'd all be dead by then anyway, so I'm not sweating that one too much at the moment.
Anyway, the reason why it's fun to think about Andre Drummond being a Sixer has nothing to do with the actual team's place in the standings. It's just amusing to imagine the chaotic energy he'll bring to a team that is in definite danger of being serioused to death this upcoming regular season, particularly if the situation with That Guy drags on well into November and/or December. There'll be a lot of glumming on the sideline, and Shake Milton getting into fights with inanimate objects in the tunnels, and Paul Reed staring switchblades at Doc Rivers wondering how much minuser the team's non-Embiid plus-minus needs to get before he gets a chance at stretch five minutes. Then Drummond will attempt an over-the-shoulder pass to no one in particular, or try to put back his own miss four times in a row, or miss a free throw and then compound it by whiffing on a teammate's high five, or force a three -- and maybe even make it. Suddenly, the team will remember: It's just basketball, y'all. And all will be right with the world, however temporarily.
I'll save the full black-cloud rant about my feelings about this upcoming Sixers season -- still got at least five more columns to get through between now and Game One -- but suffice to say I'm more appreciative than usual of the simple joys I have to look forward to this year. Andre Drummond playing the shit out of some regular season minutes, rebounding like the dickens and becoming both the bane and delight of Sixers Twitter, is about as simple and joyful as it gets. I hope to forget that he's on this team again soon, so I can remember it all over again.