Pistons fans need to remember the dark times. The days when Rodney Stuckey was our best scorer. When Jonas Jerebko was getting 23 minutes a game. When Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond were colliding with each other trying to grab the same rebound.
With Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren, and a more balanced cast, Detroit is at the top of the Eastern Conference standings and might even be a finals contender, but not so long ago, the silliest news story exemplified the dead era of the early 2010s for the Pistons.
By 2017, Andre Drummond had become a team mainstay and the highest-paid player in team history, leading the league in rebounding for multiple years. He signed huge extensions with the idea that he could level up. But zero shooting and Shaq-level free-throw shooting were holding him back.
Turns out, Drummond, who was lugging his giant frame up and down the court for 30+ minutes a night, couldn’t breathe out of his left nostril and hadn’t used that viral orifice for FOUR YEARS after sustaining an injury while playing at UConn.
“Obviously, you need both nostrils to play, but I’m hardheaded so I didn’t want to do it at the time,” Drummond said after his surgery. “I didn’t feel like it was the right time to do it so I just figured a different way until I got a chance to do it so that’s how I played for four years. I made it work.”
So he had surgery to fix his deviated septum. DeeeeTROIT BASKETBALL revived, we were told.
It worked. Drummond achieved a career-high in points per game, improved his free-throw shooting by 22 percentage points, and stayed on the court even longer.
But even with Blake Griffin, Avery Bradley, and Reggie Jackson, the team missed the playoffs, and head coach Stan Van Gundy got fired.
As we watch the current iteration of Detroit Hustle pass the ball beautifully and hopefully improve its 3-point shooting with the addition of Kevin Huerter, remember that this team once hinged its hopes on the unclogging of a nostril.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Mark Naida is editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
