When you’ve played 13 years in the NBA for six different teams as veteran center Andre Drummond has, you get a good sense of who the best players in the game are. Drummond joined the Club 520 podcast this week to talk about his career, and one of the topics he spoke about was which of his teammates is a more skilled player: Anthony Davis or Joel Embiid?
Advertisement
Drummond last played with Davis four years ago, but he’s currently on the Sixers with Embiid, which might make his answer appear a bit biased. Nevertheless, although he did compliment AD for being “uber-skilled,” he went with Embiid.
“The s*** Joel Embiid does at seven-foot and almost 300 pounds, it’s ridiculous. Like what do you do with that? Not only is he beating you with guard moves, he gonna catch you in the paint too and bump you … I feel like with Embiid there’s just so much more s*** that he throws at you … I guarded that n**** in practice every day. I was a test dummy for him, he was just trying s***.”
Skill has never been the issue with Embiid. He won his first MVP in 2023, becoming the only person besides Nikola Jokic to win the award in the last four seasons. Unlike AD, who’s been durable the last two years, he’s never been able to shake the fragile label, with this year being a case in point. He’s played in only 13 games due to a variety of ailments, and as a result, the Sixers are the most disappointing team in the NBA at 15-27.
Embiid and Davis are just two of the many skilled big men in the NBA
Davis, Embiid, and Jokic are three names that top any list of skilled bigs in the league, but there are plenty more. Club 520 co-host Jeff Teague brought up Nikola Vucevic as one who’s underrated for how many skills he has. Drummond played with the Montenegran from 2022-24 as a member of the Bulls, and he agreed with Teague’s assessment, saying, “Vooch is very skilled, Vooch’ll score.”
There’s been an ongoing narrative that with the rise of the three-point shot, skilled big men are a dying breed, but all of the aforementioned players prove that’s not the case. Post-play may be de-emphasized compared to where it was in the past, but there are seven-footers like Embiid and Davis out there who are doing things that would have made people’s heads spin back in the day.
