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Wednesday night ended in heart break. However, in the middle of Andre Drummond scoring 18 points and pulling down his 19 rebounds, one of those rebounds was the 3,000th of his career.
.@AndreDrummondd just got his 3,000th career rebound. Guess you can call him ... Andre3000 pic.twitter.com/ArVpKCOxlJ
— Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) December 10, 2015
No, he was not the youngest nor the fastest (in games) to do it. He missed the youngest mark by 143 days. That mark was set by Dwight Howard at 21 years and 343 days old; Drummond is 22 years and 121 days old.
As for the fastest, according to Reddit, he is the fourth fastest. Shaquille O'Neal only needed 234 games. Dikembe Mutombo needed 242 games. David Robinson needed 244 games. Drummond only needed 246 games. That is 10 games faster than it took Howard.
However, there is a VERY large asterisk here in regards to "fastest". Basketball-Reference.com does not have game logs to show how many rebounds Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or other older players had each game, but they do have total rebounds per season. All three of those players as well as others all reached 3,000 rebounds well before O'Neal did. Just as an example, Chamberlain had 4,090 rebounds in his first two seasons, a combined 151 games.
A quick Bing Google search shows that Howard was the youngest to reach 5,000 rebounds. He was 23 years and 112 days old. That means Drummond would have to pull down 2,000 rebounds in under a year to beat that feat. It is not impossible, but unlikely.
The only player in NBA history to pull down 2,000 or more rebounds in a season was Chamberlain. He did that in back-to-back years, 1960-61 and 1961-62. Drummond played his 18th game of the season this year when he was 22 years and 112 days old. He only has (without injury or suspension) 59 games left this year. So let's say he has 77 games left to pull off this feat. He is at 3,015 rebounds now, so 1,985 to go. He would have to average just under 26 rebounds a game. Only person to do that? Chamberlain.
Either way, congratulations Andre. Grab as many as you can!