I had previously held the opinion that Tristan Thompson and new arrival Andre Drummond would not be able to coexist due to their dramatically overlapping skillsets. Both of them are primarily inside operators whose value comes from tenacious rebounding and lots of hustle points inside. Neither is known as an especially skilled scorer from outside the paint. In fact, both of them are known as very poor scorers outside the paint.
I might have to revise that stance after this game. You would think that a veteran NBA fan such as myself, who has seen the very best and the very worst that the NBA has to offer over the course of a decade, wouldn’t be so ready to change his opinions, but it’s not like I’m totally redoing my mindset here. I’m not thinking that Thompson is a three-point specialist now, a taller version of that other Thompson over on the Warriors. I’m just thinking, the Cavs can make it work if the lineups are staggered in such a way that Thompson and Drummond don’t overlap too much. And when they do happen to overlap, Thompson will need to be ready to stop clogging the paint. If he can even be a marginal threat from deep (think Brook Lopez here), that will help out the offense quite a bit.
Of course, the Cavaliers could go back to being trash starting after the All-Star break and my optimism for this unorthodox pairing will be smashed like a fly hit by a flyswatter. In fact, that’s probably the most likely outcome out of all possible outcomes (the least likely being that the NBA dissolves the Cavs due to some points-shaving scandal and holds a dispersion draft of all their players – Bucks get dibs on Ante Zizic!). For now, though, let’s relish these scenes of TT hitting threes while everybody on his team (both on the bench and and on the court) does three-point goggles in celebration.