Andre Drummond is an engaging conversationalist, but not so much this week.
“I go home and I don’t even say nothin’ to my mom,” he said, slumped against a wall at the Pistons practice facility after another practice that pushed three hours. “I just sit down and go to sleep. Too tired to use words. I just flop down and pass out.”
Camp Van Gundy hit day four on Friday with its seventh and eighth practices. The morning session was the worst practice so far, he said, and yet he was almost beaming when it ended.
“I was happy with ’em today,” he said. “It was our worst practice and they were sloppy. The concentration wasn’t great, but what I was happy with is they stuck with it. They got better as the practice went on even though they were more tired. They had to put up with a lot of me yelling at ’em and nobody hung their heads. They accepted responsibility for what was going on and tried to change it. That’s a really good sign.”
He knows they’re all still in the early stages of getting-to-know-you, but what he’s learned so far, he’s liked. Coaches put teams through two-a-days in part because there’s a lot to cram into a week’s worth of practices before preseason games start but mostly because they want to get their team conditioned – mentally as much as physically. They want to see how they react under stress.
“The thing you want to see in your team is how they handle tough situations and today was the first one. It was a little tough and I thought they handled it great. You can tell how tired they are. This was the first practice in seven that nobody has stayed on the floor to shoot. I mean, they’re exhausted. We’ve had them on the court 18 hours in 3½ days, so it’s a tired, tired crew.”
The 20 players in camp heard Van Gundy on Thursday tell them a story about his first season in Miami, when the Heat got off to a 0-7 start. Things didn’t look appreciably better midway through the season or even at the three-quarter pole. The Heat were 25-36 with 21 games to play and Jeff Van Gundy was a little worried about his big brother’s mental health.
“I can be pretty negative and he was worried about me being depressed. But I kept saying to him all year, ‘I don’t know. There’s just something about this team. They’re a great practice team.’ Every day, you saw it. And sure enough, at the end of the year, they win 17 out of 21 and they’re in the second round of the playoffs. I told ’em yesterday, I just have this great belief that if you’re a great practice team, you’ll end up being a good team and right now – seven practices in – this has been a very good practice team.”
Their reward will be a day off Saturday. Then back for two more grueling practices on Sunday, the last double session on the docket before the start of the preseason next Tuesday.
“There’s one thing I can tell you,” Drummond wheezed. “We’ll probably be the best conditioned team in the NBA.”
He meant physically. But as they endure Van Gundy’s regimen week over week, a team not known in recent seasons for mental toughness just might travel a path similar to that first Miami team of his.
“The thing that’s been the most pleasant is the work ethic of the guys,” Van Gundy said. “At the end of five hours last night, watching them back in the weight room, even compared to September. Guys are working extremely hard and they’ve been very, very open to being coached and being pushed. There hasn’t been any excuse making, there hasn’t been any of that. You couldn’t ask for more in terms of effort and attitude and trying to help each other and the whole thing. That’s been fantastic.”