Knicks Should Tell Andre Drummond to Abandon New Skill

The Knicks' starting five is loaded with great shooting, and that took off even more this past season with the rise of Josh Hart from three-point range. That’s thanks to their center, Karl-Anthony Towns, being the best shooting big man that the sport has ever seen.

When KAT went to the bench, the Knicks switched out shooting for rebounding and screening with Mitchell Robinson—both things he thrived at. However, as we know, Mitchell Robinson left the team this offseason, signing a three-year deal with Boston.

To replace Robinson, in comes Andre Drummond, who spent the last two seasons with the Sixers as a backup big, filling in at times as a starter for the oft-injured Joel Embiid.

In Andre Drummond’s most recent season with the Sixers in 2025-26, he added a new trick to his game. He began shooting more than one three per game after basically never shooting any type of volume from beyond the arc through his first 13 NBA seasons.

The numbers behind Andre Drummond's sudden 3-point shot

Surge of attempts (and efficiency) last season

While there are drawbacks with Drummond, especially with the decline in his availability over recent seasons, having both their starting and backup big able to shoot threes should be a positive for the Knicks, right? Not so fast.

If you break down Drummond’s three-point shot diet from the 2025-26 season, 85.6% of his three-point attempts (77 of 90) came from the corner. He shot 37.7% on corner threes and 23.1% on threes that were classified as “above-the-break” (ATB) attempts.

3-point shooting by zone

That’s obviously a gigantic difference between Drummond and KAT. Towns is basically the exact opposite in terms of three-point attempt locations. He took only 17 corner threes all season (41.2% FG%), as 94.5% of his three-point attempts were above-the-break threes.

The Knicks would have the likes of OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges hanging out in the corners... Josh Hart was moving all around the arc, and same with Landry Shamet, who could make a three-point shot from basically anywhere. Drummond attempting to space doesn’t really fit into that equation... because he’s only a corner threes guy.

On that topic, no other team in the NBA during the 2025-26 season had a higher percentage of their shot attempts come from corner threes than the Knicks (12.9%), according to CleaningTheGlass.

Difference in how the Knicks space in the corner

When Drummond was attempting his threes, he was seen more as an afterthought from opposing defenses. Also, he’s usually just going straight to the corner and that then allows a defender, usually the opposing big, to sag off him and clog the paint—which wouldn’t help someone like Jalen Brunson, who loves to operate inside the arc.