Andre Drummond has earned a reputation as one of the best defenders in the NBA. The center has an enormous talent to grab those rebounds and even uses strange tactics to prevent other players from catching them.
This doesn’t apply only to rivals, but to teammates. Last year, Drummond revealed he elbowed a former Detroit Pistons teammate in the face after the latter kept going for his rebounds. Rebounds are Andre’s thing, and he took it extremely seriously.
“I’ve put my hands on my teammates before,” Drummond said on the Mickstape Podcast, via Cavaliers Nation. “It doesn’t matter who. It was in Detroit, he’s actually one of my really close friends, too.
“I had to put my hands on him when we first got him. I told him to do something and he didn’t do it. I gave him a warning and he still didn’t do it.”
If you're a teammate of @AndreDrummond's… Just let him grab the rebound. Save yourself the headache.
Full episode: https://t.co/Fs0QUW0ddN
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— Mickstape (@MickstapeShow) May 19, 2020
As the player said, his teammates didn’t get the memo, and Drummond had to take things to the next level.
“I punched him in the head,” Drummond said. “He didn’t do it again. It happened more than once too. It was because of rebounds.
“He’s a rebounding player too, as a guard. He kept coming to take my rebounds, so I pulled him aside during a timeout and said, ‘Yo bro, you don’t see me trying to go for 50 every night, don’t try to come in for rebounds.’”
If Karl Malone’s elbows were dangerous for rivals, Drummond’s aren’t any safer for teammates. The man wants his teammates, and there’s nothing you can do to snatch the basketball from his hands unless you want to suffer that headache.
