Maybe it’s just me, but every time a player with a checkered past offers a testimonial about how he’s changed his ways and the past will never be the future, I’m immediately suspicious. That’s the first play in the reformed athlete playbook. One of the first rules in my profession is, quite simply, you are who you are. For some reason, though, I bought what Quinton Andrews was selling — and I know I wasn’t alone Wednesday night — when he spoke about the new direction he’s taking.

“You can’t be a leader out there if you’re not doing the right things,” Andrews said. “When a young guy sees you blowing up at a coach, he’ll think it’s OK for them to do it also, which is not the case.”

He won’t agree with everything that happens and he admits he still gets worked up from time to time. The difference now is he internalizes his emotions and puts off expressing them until the right time and place.

“If you feel that the coaches are screaming at you for no reason, well, they’re the coaches and they get paid to coach,” he said. “You just take the criticism. If you still feel at the end of practice that you were right and he was wrong, go step to him like a man and talk to him in his office.”

Andrews has yet to do that.

“Now I feel when they’re coaching me,” he said, “they’re telling me something that’s right.”