What is Andre Drummond's value in a trade?
On Monday, my ESPN colleagues Adrian Wojnarowski and Brian Windhorst reported that the Cleveland Cavaliers plan to sit Drummond until they can find a new home for him before the March 25 trade deadline. Cleveland is ready to feature the younger Jarrett Allen, acquired from the Brooklyn Nets in last month's four-team trade, as a starting center.
Having given up a second-round pick and expiring contracts to get Drummond from the Detroit Pistons last February, can the Cavaliers do better this time around? And why has it proved so difficult to get value for a player again averaging a double-double and ranked second in the NBA with 13.5 rebounds per game?
Let's take a look at those questions, plus potential trade destinations.
Drummond's box score stats don't translate to value
On the surface, Drummond looks like one of the league's better centers. Any team acquiring him in a trade can put together an impressive press release, highlighting that Drummond is a two-time All-Star who has averaged 17.5 points and 15.1 rebounds since the start of the 2018-19 season. Over a three-season span since the ABA-NBA merger, only one other player has averaged better than 15 PPG and 15 RPG: Moses Malone, whose similar stretch from 1977-78 through 1980-81 included his first MVP season.
Dig deeper and it's clear that Drummond is compiling his prodigious box score stats in a very different environment, particularly for centers. As I explained in a similar piece last season, Drummond's monstrous defensive rebound numbers don't always lead to his team excelling on the defensive glass because of his tendency to pursue rebounds instead of boxing out and allowing teammates to come down with boards.
That's happening again this season. As a team, Cleveland is 28th in the league in defensive rebound percentage. In fairness to Drummond, that's more about how much the team has struggled to secure rebounds with Allen and backup JaVale McGee on the court. But even with Drummond, the league's best defensive rebounder in percentage terms, the Cavaliers have been only average on the defensive glass.
Looking at context also takes the air out of Drummond's scoring numbers, which have been built on volume rather than efficiency. Not since 2013-14, his first season as a full-time starter, Drummond has posted a true shooting percentage better than league average. And that has come in the context of centers scoring more efficiently than ever thanks to the floor spacing provided by improved shooting.
The average center this season is making 58% of 2-point attempts, another mark Drummond hasn't reached since 2013-14. In that span, his best 2-point accuracy was 55% last season. Troublingly, that's down to 48% so far in 2020-21.
It's possible that's a function of Cleveland's limited playmaking at guard. According to Second Spectrum tracking, Drummond's quantified shot quality (qSQ, which measures the effective field goal percentage an average shooter would be expected to achieve given the location, type and distance to nearby defenders on Drummond's shots) has dropped as compared to the past two seasons. But Drummond's quantified shooting index (qSI, the difference between his qSQ and his actual eFG%) of minus-6.2 is the lowest of his career.
The fear is the incredible athleticism for his size that has enabled Drummond to post such impressive box score stats may be starting to fade in his late 20s. Drummond has shot just 56% on attempts inside the restricted area around the basket, per Second Spectrum, down from 64% last season. And it's hard to blame that on the Cavaliers' infrastructure based on the bouncier Allen finishing at a 78% clip in the restricted area since his arrival in Cleveland.
Drummond's salary makes trades challenging
Despite Drummond's flaws, there are undoubtedly contending teams he could help. The challenge is matching salary to get him there via trade, as my colleague Bobby Marks noted on Twitter, given Drummond is making $28.8 million in the final season of a five-year contract.
Take the Toronto Raptors, who have a hole at starting center where Aron Baynes (Drummond's former backup in Detroit) has struggled this season. Baynes, whose $7.35 million salary for 2021-22 is non-guaranteed, is Toronto's largest expiring contract besides the $31.5 million salary of six-time All-Star Kyle Lowry. Trading Lowry for Drummond is a nonstarter, meaning the Raptors would have to include one of their younger players under long-term contract to match salaries.
Similar obstacles make it difficult if not impossible to send Drummond to the center-needy Nets (who have missed Allen since dealing him as part of their trade for James Harden) and Portland Trail Blazers (who hope to get Jusuf Nurkic back before too long, making this a temporary need).
The one contending team that can easily add salary is the Boston Celtics, who hold a $28.5 million trade exception from the sign-and-trade sending Gordon Hayward to the Charlotte Hornets. But even if the Celtics thought Drummond was the best use of their exception after adding former Cavaliers center Tristan Thompson in free agency, his salary doesn't quite fit.
Boston would have to get there by acquiring a player making a similar salary (Otto Porter Jr. of the Chicago Bulls would work) using the exception and then flipping him for Drummond -- a move the NBA might not be inclined to allow, depending on how quickly the two trades occurred in sequence.
Given those challenges, Cleveland's best hope of trading Drummond would probably be for expiring contracts similar to the ones the Cavaliers sent to the Pistons last February. Unfortunately for Cleveland, there are fewer such albatross contracts on the books now that most of the deals signed in the free-spending summer of 2016 have concluded.
Perhaps the Bulls would be willing to swap Porter for Drummond with frontcourt starters Wendell Carter Jr. and Lauri Markkanen currently sidelined. Or the San Antonio Spurs might view Drummond as an upgrade on LaMarcus Aldridge, slumping amid injuries at age 35. But it's unlikely those deals would offer the Cavaliers anything much better than the distant second-round pick they gave up to get Drummond.