When Andre Drummond was a rookie last season, we looked at the ways he could leap from a potential impact player to an actual one. It began with increased conditioning, which would lead to an rise in playing time, which is all he really would need to be one of the top big men in basketball. Drummond now plays more than 32 minutes per game and, consequently, is just one of the three players in the NBA who average better than 12 points and 12 rebounds a game. The other two are Kevin Love, the world's best power forward, and Dwight Howard, the world's top center. Not bad company.
Drummond is also in a select group of double-double guys who block more than 1.5 shots a game -- he is elite at preventing shots near the rim and second in the league in double-doubles despite playing fewer minutes per game than the other players in the top 13 in double-doubles. Everything about Drummond screams superstar, yet he has work to do to get into that rarefied air because he has an Achilles' heel that can cause all sorts of problems moving forward. Plus, superstar bigs must dominate games as scorers.