One game down, 81 to go. How’s everyone feeling?
You don’t feel well? Chin up; here’s something to cheer you up.
There we are. That’s why we don’t get bent out of shape over individual regular-season games anymore.
There truly wasn’t much to really evaluate from the first game of the season, which acted more as a showcase for the league of Philadelphia’s new starting five and the pizzazz around the Knicks’ banner raising than anything meaningful.
I mean, it
was the worst offensive execution of any game this team has played in the 2020s, so unless these guys had the basketball ability sucked out of them like the Monstars at the parade, whatever.
Of all the things that happened on the floor on Opening Night, none intrigued me more than the newest Knick, Andre Drummond. We saw a lot from him due to Karl-Anthony Towns’ early foul trouble.
Early in the game, he looked like the biggest steal of the offseason, posting a double-double with ease and carrying the offense at times.
Late in the game, he was the worst player on the court, throwing away possessions with his poor touch around the rim.
Ladies and gentlemen, from the creators of the “Jameis Winston Experience”, I present to you:
The Andre Drummond Experience.
He wows with some of the best traits you can ask for out of a center. He is one of the best rebounders in NBA history on a rate basis; he sets brick-wall screens, he fills up space. While he’s not a good defender, he’s a lane-clogger on defense.
Then, there’s the flip side. His touch around the rim is diabolically bad. His stocky build makes him an extremely limited defender and a non-existent lob threat. While he’s started working on corner threes, he is still almost exclusively an under-the-rim offensive player.
It’s those two things that separate him from a Mitchell Robinson. While he’s historically more durable than Robinson, he doesn’t give the Knicks the game-breaking defensive ability without putting pressure on the rim. That fast break where Mikal Bridges tried to hit him on a lob, not realizing the 33-year-old can’t really get up there anymore, said everything.
Drummond is good in small doses. It’s why he’s forced to sign these minimum contracts to sit behind All-NBA talents like Joel Embiid and Towns. When you over-expose him, the bad starts to show up a lot more than the good.
We got the full Drummond experience on Tuesday. He had 10 points, 12 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 stocks in 16 first-half minutes, going 4-for-8 from the field with six offensive rebounds. He was a maniac on the boards, punishing a Sixers team with not much size and not many willing rebounders.
Considering how little they had at their disposal, the Knicks couldn’t have done much better than Drummond in free agency. A lot of their offense over the last few years has been predicated on winning the possession battle. When they miss a three, someone is there to give them a reload. When they miss at the rim, there’s a putback waiting to happen.
When Drummond is on the floor, it’s going to be like Mitch never left offensively… most of the time.
The one glaring problem with having Drummond as your backup center behind a guy like Towns who gets in early foul trouble way too often is that his overexposure really starts to hurt you.
He played a grand total of six minutes in the second half and was a minus-13. He went 1-for-5 from the field, including an airball in the final seconds of the third quarter.
His minutes at the end of the third were especially damaging. The Knicks were leading by five when he entered the game with 3:39 left and trailed by seven when the final horn sounded.
What went wrong? His eyes got too wide offensively.
He and Bridges had a two-man game around the two-minute mark. It looked to be working in the sense that it allowed Mikal to hit him on a bounce pass for what should be an easy floater or rim run, but the Sixers rotated two guys underneath the basket. At this point, Drummond could look up and swing to a wide open OG Anunoby or Deuce McBride.
Instead, he takes a nine-footer that isn’t even close.
Drummond is a very willing passer, especially on offensive rebounds, but plays like these still happen for all seldom-used bigs.
The Knicks were starting to be grilled from deep by a collection of Sixers. Trailing by four in the final minute, Drummond gets the ball in the corner. For a brief second, I thought he would shoot it. It’s not a great shot with 14 on the shot clock, but he’s open and was a passable three-point shooter last season.
Instead, he passed back and the Knicks once again stagnated offensively. He was given a pass in the post with seven on the shot clock, but the defense collapsed and it led to him taking… this shot.
I’m not expecting him to have eyes in the back of his head, but unless it’s a grenade, he should never be attempting whatever that is. All it does is give more energy to your opponent.
After Tyrese Maxey airballed, the Knicks got the ball with 1.5 on the game clock. For some reason, McBride, the former high school quarterback, decided to throw a 50-foot pass to his backup center down the court and airmailed it. This isn’t Drummond’s fault (why was he even out there?), but it involves him.
Jaylen Brown nailed a buzzer-beating three there to cap an 11-0 run to end the third. That sprint by the Sixers wound up costing the Knicks the game.
This stretch doesn’t even include his three baffling missed dunks. He was routinely getting stuffed by Joel Embiid on the interior and couldn’t finish all game, going 5-for-13 on the night.
That is the big crux for Drummond: he is an abysmal finisher for a seven-footer, and he’s progressively getting worse.
Andre Drummond FG% in the restricted area by year, and where he ranked among centers (min. 100 FGA):
2025-26: 54.1% (61st/61)
2024-25: 59.2% (59th/60)
2023-24: 60.3% (55th/60)
2022-23: 65.5% (56th/64)
2021-22: 61.2% (54th/61)
Compare that to who he’s replacing in Robinson: the man who has the second-highest field goal percentage in NBA history on a diet of 100% layups and dunks. In 2025-26, Robinson was 25th out of the 61 centers, which doesn’t sound impressive, but his 71.9% is leaps and bounds ahead of Drummond’s dead-last figure.
All told, Knicks fans are going to have a love-hate relationship with Drummond all season long, a man who says the right things and is good natured, but is also the Jameis Winston of the NBA.
An incredibly entertaining, but incredibly inconsistent, ballplayer.
