Drummond exposes weak spot for Raptors
With Biyombo gone, Raps had tough time handling Pistons’ six-foot-11 centre
WASHINGTON— It was about 25 seconds into the game — a pre-season one, remember — when Andre Drummond set the tone for the night.
The Detroit Pistons centre saw Toronto Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry enter into the paint and got protective of his house. Drummond swatted Lowry’s shot back and crushed the point guard, sending him to the court with an Iversonian-like splat, his right elbow breaking the fall.
With his team down 20 points in the third quarter, Drummond stayed physical. He was a six-foot-11, 279pound wrecking ball as he threw his body around in the paint and dove for a loose ball on the sideline at one point, sending DeMar DeRozan to the court with a thud.
For the most part, the Raptors looked good in their 103-92 win over the Pistons. Lowry slowly picked himself up off of the floor after that opening play and went on to score 27 points, while DeRozan added 26.
But Drummond left the Raptors with plenty to think about when they see the Pistons in Wednesday’s season opener at the Air Canada Centre. He was a problem for the Raptors in all 35 minutes he played, as he put together a 16-point, 13-rebound game when he wasn’t throwing his opponents all over the court. The tough task of defending Drummond on Wednesday fell mostly to Jonas Valanciunas, who was on the floor for 28 minutes, and Lucas Nogueira, who logged 18 minutes and drew the toughest assignment of his pre-sea- son thus far.
“Drummond’s a tough guy,” Nogueira said. “He’s not just strong and athletic, but he’s a good player, he has a lot of skill.”
Though it came in a meaningless game, Wednesday night could have marked the first time this year that the Raptors missed the presence of Bismack Biyombo. While he’s a few inches shorter than Drummond, Biyombo is capable of matching just about anybody in the league in terms of physicality. In Detroit, the Raptors lacked that.
At seven feet and 220 pounds, Nogueira was outmatched in the post with Drummond. Valanciunas, seven feet and 255 pounds, fared somewhat better but both were at a loss when Drummond caught the ball down low.
“J.V. and Lucas have to do a better job of fighting the post and pushing them off their spot, like they do to us,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “That starts with sprinting back, getting down low and making them come through your body, starting at the free-throw line.”
Casey insisted that his bigs couldn’t simply concede that Drummond would win the physicality battle.
“We don’t concede nothing. I don’t believe in conceding,” he said. “We have to do a better job of physically moving our feet if you can’t hold him off.
“(It’s important to) get around and make the (post-entry) catch hard and not get behind him and be begging for mercy. We’ve got to do a better job of that and use our strength, which is our speed and quickness and agility, because I think J.V. has quick feet and Lucas has quick feet.”
Valanciunas said that defending Drummond is the same, whether it’s him, Nogueira or rookie Jakob Poeltl, who logged just five minutes Wednesday, doing the job.
“There’s no difference. We both have to do the same job. We took a few of his lob dunks away and (in the future) we have to do a better job of not letting him catch deep and pushing him out,” he said.
It’s an adjustment that the Raptors’ centres will have to make quickly. They see Drummond again on Oct. 26 and will have to deal with Hassan Whiteside and the Miami Heat on Nov. 4.
Then they get arguably the toughest big man task of them all on Nov. 6, when DeMarcus Cousins and the Sacramento Kings come to town.