Andre Drummond: What I really realized, after all the years of being away from Detroit, was my mindset. I was like, you know, “I’ve got to be this certain guy. I’ve got to play a certain way to get to that point of making a max contract.” Once I got that max contract, I was like, “Oh [expletive], my work is done. I did it. I made it here. Now I get to play however I want to play. I’m the best guy on my team, making the highest amount of money, so I get to have this leadership role.” I don’t think I did it the right way because not only did I not understand that that could’ve been $100 million two, three, four, or five times, I only got it once because I didn’t maximize that time of being the max guy. If I could go back, I would’ve done it completely differently.
I would’ve been a lot more attentive to working on my game and becoming more than just the best rebounder in the league. I would’ve tried to add more pieces to my game so that when the league changed, it wouldn’t have been so difficult for me to adjust.