Andre Drummond's Three-Point Shooting Is the Greatest Thing About This Sixers Season
AU on the Sixers' purest gift to fans this holiday season.
Nearly two months into this Sixers season, there is a truly unexpected amount to be celebrated with this team. The discovery of Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker as valuable finds on the two-way scrap heap. Paul George’s return to health and a relative degree of consistent two-way production. VJ Edgecombe’s emergence as a Rookie of the Year candidate and a likely future star alongside Tyrese Maxey in the backcourt. Tyrese’s own leap to superstar and franchise player status. Joel Embiid’s... well, he’s played 11 games already, which is something. The team is 15-11, somehow a five seed in the East, and just came off their best win of the season Friday night in New York. For a team that’s given us a lot to be miserable about the past couple years, it’d be surprisingly difficult to choose a thing to be happiest about this year.
Wait, no it wouldn’t. I mean all that stuff is great, sure, we love to see it etc. But the thing to be most thankful for as Sixers fans in these final days of 2025 is easily Andre Drummond jacking threes.
For as much as the NBA has evolved in recent decades, it remains a truism that there are only two basketball things that bring 100% pure joy to fans, teammates and the world entire: a little guy trying to dunk or a big guy trying to shoot. Even in the age of Mac McClung going back-to-back-to-back at All-Star Weekend or Karl Anthony-Towns and Nikola Jokic hitting over 100 threes a year at a 40% clip, there’s just something simple and uplifting about a professional basketball player attempting to do the last thing he should be on the court to do, about wading into those unchartered waters with an open heart and a clear conscience. Their coaches certainly don’t want it, their teammates think it’s hilarious, but they will not be dissuaded from realizing the entirety of their potential being on the basketball court. I think that’s beautiful, really.
Of course it usually goes poorly. With bigs shooting in particular — especially if it hasn’t been a major part of their game from the beginning — the results can be quite gnarly. As they have been for Andre Drummond throughout the course of his first 13 years in the NBA, where he was a resounding 18-140 (13%) for his entire career before this year, never making more than five in a season and only once hitting even 30% of his attempts (a scorching 2-6 for Detroit in 2015-16). In that viral video that I think Mike even mentioned on the Ricky recently, featuring historically bad three-point shooters who just keep getting worse as the video goes on, Drum isn’t exactly the final boss, but he certainly comes more than halfway in — following such luminaries from deep as DeAndre Jordan, Ben Wallace, and yes, even Ben Simmons. Three-point shooting has not been a thing in Andre Drummond’s career to this point.
But I think we could tell pretty early on this season was gonna be different. Basketball Andre started dipping in his toes into that water last year, going 3-20 from deep — more attempts than he’d launched in his prior four seasons combined — but always with that slightest hesitation, like he was worried he was going to have to fight off one of the assistant coaches rushing the court to try to tackle him first. But this preseason, he really started to put those fuckers up without flinching: six attempts in 47 minutes across four games, with three of them actually going in. It seemed like enough of a paradigm shift for Drum that when I set over-unders for Mike and Spike in this year’s preseason predictions podcast, I set Drummond’s three-pointer total for the season at a seemingly robust 13.5, which Spike and especially Mike both scoffed at being so high. (Spike denies this, but there was unmistakable SCOFFING, I tell you.)
Well turns out said scoffing was justified, but for the opposite reason as they expected: 26 games into the season and Drummond has already sailed past that over-under. With his 3-4 shooting night from deep against the Knicks on Friday— again, needs to be mentioned that Drummond failed to hit three triples for an entire SEASON until his seventh year in his league — Drummond is now 14 of 34 for the year from beyond, not only officially hitting his over but also nearly tripling his previous career high (five makes for two consecutive years in 2018-19 and 2019-20). Most incredibly, with his 41.2% mark from deep, he is the team leader among regulars in three-point percentage; only Eric Gordon, with his 5-8 line in 57 total minutes, is higher.
And it’s been wonderful every single time. Honestly I’m grateful enough just for Drummond attempts; I never dreamed I’d get to see this many makes from him as well. And he celebrates each one of them exactly how you’d want him to — with some exaggerated SEE TOLD YOU I COULD gesture to the crowd and/or LET ME HEAR IT Y’ALL call to the bench, who of course is always more than happy to indulge him. And novelty aside, it’s actually been a real weapon for the team: They might not have even been able to pull off that 116-107 win in New York last night if not for his three big triples, which mathematically ended up being the literal difference in the game. During a year when What’s Going on With Joel’s Shooting — just 12-53 so far, a paltry 23% — has become one of the larger lingering questions, the answer might actually be simple: Drummond took it.
Can it last? Probably not, but who fucking cares? If Kyle Schwarber decided he was secretly a speedster and swiped 15 bags in 20 attempts for the month of May, would we be having serious conversations about moving him to the leadoff spot or would we be too busy dying laughing? OK bad example maybe since Schwarb’s already hitting leadoff — baseball is weird about this shit now, what are you gonna do. But point is, when Andre Drummond hits 14 of his first 34 threes for the season, you don’t ask how it happened, and you certainly don’t wonder if it can continue. You just say thank you. Thank you, Andre, for this holiday gift of pure joy and magic while everything else is so fraught with expectation and consequence. Thank you for somehow beating the Knicks. Thank you for being you, to the fullest extent.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.