The San Antonio Spurs’ season wasn’t even finished for 24 hours and already there are rumors left and right about what could be a busy offseason. First came reports that the Spurs have taken interest in former Syracuse guard Antonio “Scoop” Jardine (great name). Now comes something juicier. According to a tweet from Yahoo!’s Marc Spears, the Spurs are taking a look at former UConn Center Andre Drummond.
“When asked what teams off the Top 5 radar want to meet with him, former UConn center Andre Drummond said the Celtics and Spurs.”
This isn’t the first time the Spurs have done something like this. Two years ago, they interviewed Derrick Favors. Ultimately nothing materialized. Teams talk with all sorts of different players all the time. It’s part of the process. In case you’re unfamiliar with Drummond, he’s a 6’11” physical freak who was briefly in the discussion for the first pick in the draft this season, but an underwhelming Freshman year ended that talk pretty quickly. Having said that, he could still be the second pick in the draft and most likely won’t drop past the sixth pick in the draft.
Drummond has every physical tool you look for in a franchise big man. He’s incredibly fast and agile, a great leaper, already a very good defender, especially in the pick and roll. But make no mistake about it, Drummond is a project even more than Derrick Favors was when the Spurs interviewed him. So you might be asking yourself why would the Spurs be interested in a guy like that? Despite all his warts, the offensive rawness, the lack of aggression on offense, this guy has the potential to be Dwight Howard 2.0 (or the rawest version of David Robinson). That’s his 10 foot high ceiling. Draft Express list his best case comparison as Serge Ibaka and his worst as DeAndre Jordan. That’s not bad.
Still we’re talking about a guy who is likely a top five pick, which means if the Spurs want to get a hold of him they’re probably trading Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili or Kawhi Leonard and those are three guys most Spurs fans (and I’d assume the front office) deem as untouchable guys unless they’re trading for the number one pick in the draft. It also seem counter-intuitive that the Spurs would take on such a raw project when they were close to the Finals. Trading up to draft polished guys like Thomas Robinson or Jared Sullinger would be one thing, but a guy like Drummond is probably two to three years away from starting to reach his potential.
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