Pistons' Do Not Plan on Shutting Down Andre Drummond for the Season

Detroit Pistons' Andre Drummond has missed several games due to a back injury. With the season winding down the Pistons going nowhere, some have questioned if the Pistons will try to bring back Drummond this year or shut him down for the season. David Mayo of MLive says that the Pistons would "love to get him back, even if only for a half-dozen games."The intent is not to shut down Drummond. The Pistons would love to get him back, even if only for a half-dozen games, to get him acclimated to playing again and send him into the summer offseason training period on a high note. The Pistons also were getting to the point, just before Drummond was hurt, where they commonly would play him several minutes per game at center, alongside Greg Monroe at power forward. That's the pairing of the future, and while it might have been exploited more even before Drummond was hurt in early February, the injury short-circuited any chance of it happening extensively.Of course, that doesn't mean that they will try to rush him back. If he's not 100% healthy, they won't be giving him any playing time. The purpose of him playing again is for chemistry purposes and to help create that Drummond-Monroe frontcourt. David goes on to explain that he will only play once the medical staff is comfortable with his recovery.If they don't know Drummond is 100-percent ready to play, he won't play, and that decision will be made by medical staff and no one else. If the medical staffers are comfortable that Drummond is fully recovered and his conditioning level has reached an appropriate level, you'll see him on the floor.In the 50 games that Drummond has played in, he's averaging 7.3 points and 7.5 rebounds in just 19.7 minutes of play. He's scoring at a high efficiency as well, converting on 59.2% of his shots. He does, however, struggle immensely at the line, where he is shooting a poor 36.5%.  Follow @hoopsinjurynews!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://www.nbainjurynews.com//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");