Andre Drummond finshes fourth in the Most Improved Player voting

In case you missed it (or just did not care like I did), the NBA did their end of the year awards show in which they handed out their regular season awards like MVP, Coach of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, and Most Improved Player. The fact that they hand out these awards so late causes unnecessary controversy due to the fact that they are regular season awards and people try to factor in playoff results when making their judgments.

New Pistons coach Dwane Casey took home the Coach of the Year award.

The Most Improved Player award went to Victor Oladipo of the Indiana Pacers, an obvious choice for the award, but it was well-deserved. Andre Drummond ended up finishing fourth in the voting behind Oladipo, Houston Rockets center Clint Capella, and former Piston and current Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie. Drummond ended up with 46 points, just four points behind Dinwiddie, although he did not receive any first place votes.

This tweet has the full results:

Andre Drummond put in a lot of work in the offseason to improve his free throws. He improved his percentage from 39 percent last season to 61 percent this season. On top of that he was given a new role in the offense where things were running through him more often as he averaged a career-high three assists per game. He also averaged a career-high 16 rebounds per game and improved his defensive awareness a bit.

It is nice to see people around the league take some notice of Andre Drummond’s improvement as a player. While his numbers did increase in a few categories as mentioned above, there isn’t any eye-popping jump outside of the free throw percentage and that is usually what people look at when deciding who gets this award.

Hopefully Andre Drummond can use this as motivation to further improve his game and help get the Pistons back into the playoffs.