Andre Drummond’s night against Philadelphia gave the Knicks something worth testing, even if it came in a loss.
He finished the 106-100 defeat with 12 points, 14 rebounds and four assists in 24:27, and the turnover column stayed clean. Seven of those rebounds came on the offensive glass, which only sharpens the case for a more deliberate way to use him. The basic question is simple: can the Knicks do more with him than send him straight after the next miss?
The official play-by-play gives the outline of the passing burst. Drummond was credited with assists on a Josh Hart jumper, a Landry Shamet three, a Jordan Clarkson floater and another Shamet jumper. Those four passes led to nine points from three different teammates.
That is not a roadmap for a new offense, and it shouldn’t be treated like one. But it is enough to justify a small trial.
A few elbow catches, a few dribble-handoff looks with a shooter moving around him - that’s the kind of controlled experiment that makes sense here. It would force a defender to decide whether to stay with the shooter or stay tied to Drummond near the rim.
The point is not to turn him into the main decision-maker. The play-by-play tells us what was scored, not exactly how each pass was created, so the idea is not to pretend Tuesday proved the Knicks already had this running from the elbow.
It didn’t. What it did do was show enough to merit a closer look.
There’s also a very clear fallback if the experiment gets messy. Brown can keep the creation in the hands of his guards and use Drummond the old-fashioned way: screener, roller, rebounder. If the passing lane gets crowded or the turnovers start piling up, that simpler version makes sense again.
And this shouldn’t come at the expense of Karl-Anthony Towns. The point is to give Drummond a few planned chances to make the next play, not to carve out a larger role by reducing someone else’s work.
So the idea is modest: a handful of scripted decisions, then a look at whether he can feed a shooter into the next action without giving the ball away. If that holds, the Knicks may have found a useful wrinkle.
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Andre Drummond Buzz Is Giving Heat Fans Plenty To Talk About
Andre Drummonds season opener against his former team gave the Knicks a familiar reminder of what he can still do on the glass. He finished with 12 points and 14 rebounds, a solid showing in a game that naturally carried a little extra edge for both sides given his past in New York.
After the game, though, the chatter moved well beyond the box score. A social media account sparked plenty of reaction by alleging Drummond is dating fitness influencer Sophia Zeilstra, and the post quickly caught fire among fans. There has been no verified or public confirmation of that relationship, but the rumor has already become part of the conversation around a night that was supposed to be about basketball. [Read more 🡒]