NEWSLETTER
Find someone who loves you as much as Andre Drummond loves rebounding.
The Chicago Bulls’ center remains one of the league’s most elite contributors on the glass. While his career has seen him go from franchise cornerstone to backup big-man, this specialized skillset has kept him a valuable part of any rotation. And he knows it, too.
“I go after each and every one of them,” Drummond told Bulls dot com earlier this season after his 25-rebound performance. “If I can’t get it I still make the attempt; sometimes they fall my way and sometimes they don’t. The more times I go, the more times I’ll get it. It’s a skill. It gets me going in a game when I get offensive rebounds. When I came into the NBA I wanted to be the best rebounder who ever played and I set out to do that.”
Drummond currently sits 37th in all-time rebounds for the NBA (10,465). He is only two more boards away from surpassing another former Bull, Tyson Chandler. The only active players who rank ahead of Drummond for the time being are DeAndre Jordan (35th) and LeBron James (31st). All things considered, Drummond has a real chance to surpass both by the end of his career, as he’s still only 30 years old.
An Insane Andre Drummond Stat …
While Drummond has led the league in rebounds per game numerous times, this season might be the best example of just how special he is in that department. I was looking at his season stat line the other day and noticed Drummond was averaging 8.7 rebounds per game in his reserve role. Even though the Bulls have used him a bit more in recent weeks due to their injury trouble, this is still a remarkable accomplishment for someone who averages as few minutes as Drummond.
With that in mind, I turned to Stathead’s database to filter for the total number of players who have averaged at least 8.0 rebounds in 17.0 or fewer minutes per game (as of publishing, Drummond is currently at 16.9 minutes per game). Here are the names that popped up:
Andre Drummond. That’s it.
The Bulls’ big man is rebounding at a rate the league has never seen before. Heck, even if we created a bigger cushion and had Drummond at 18.0 minutes per game, only a total of three players would’ve ever averaged 8.0 rebounds while playing under that workload – Dwight Howard (2020-21) and Ed Davis (2018-19). If that doesn’t highlight just how important Drummond remains on the glass, I’m not quite sure what will.
Stats like these are precisely why it’s hard to imagine a world where he remains in Chicago past this offseason. I would imagine several center-needy contenders are ready to get their hands on the gifted rebounder. There may even be some teams ready to hand him a starting spot, especially after what they saw from him in place of Nikola Vucevic back in December. Drummond averaged 14.0 points, 17.9 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks in his seven consecutive starts earlier this year.
