What Joe Dumars has done for the Detroit Pistons this offseason may not overcome the flunks he’s had testing his best judgments as their president of basketball operations. This offseason can’t re-pick the 2003 NBA Draft with Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh on the board; it can’t take back the trust instilled in $55 million and $35 million contracts for players, Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, who teetered between the bench and the floor, more often than not the pine, even on a thriving team; and it certainly can’t restack the dominoes of mishaps as the core group, which brought them an NBA title and six consecutive conference finals appearances, slowly eroded into a hope-searching squad of young players.
By early 2009, going to Pistons games gradually crept out of popularity, fingers all crossed that Allen Iverson would just stop having dates at the doctor’s office. Having only played 54 of 82 games that year, Iverson was a V-8 in a golf cart that’d seen brighter days; the piece just didn’t fit into the system. A team, with only a swap at one starting position, fell from a top-two team in the East to one dangling to the eighth seed for dear life. Just Detroit’s luck, Chauncey Billups was flourishing in Denver’s system, outperforming Iverson in field goal, three-point, and free throw percentage, overall scoring, and most importantly, wins.
Dumars never thought to bring an umbrella before the season spiraled into a shower of criticism. Need I say more, Pistons fans?
“I never wanted to leave,” Billups reflected. “I wanted to retire here.”
Now with the lukewarm welcoming to do that, a two-year contract before him, the time seems quite fitting for remorse.
“You know every decision’s going to be debated from the time you make it, and you live with that, but very few of them do you simply wish that, ‘Man, I wish I had that one back,’” Dumars admitted alongside Billups at a press conference. “And I’ve said that to him—if I had to do it all over again, absolutely not. Wouldn’t have ever made that move with him.”
It seemed like that peak-of-the-slope moment for the Pistons after two laborious months in the front office. With Michigan’s Trey Burke still on the board alongside Georgia’s Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, each a lights-out shooter from beyond the arc, Pistons fans knew the fitting decision would have to be the guy playing a few miles west of Detroit.
Though still a solid pick, reassured with a 6’6” frame to Burke’s 6’1”, the decision was met on Caldwell-Pope, a name of obscurity you wouldn’t be surprised hearing from Harry Potter as some slang insult. Oh, but fans had enough of those up their sleeve, though they never pulled. By the end of the NBA Summer League, they were glad they didn’t.
Into July, Orlando Summer League having tipped off, all eyes had glimpses of the rookies, second and third year players, and other guys just trying to make the cut. Among them, second-round pick Tony Mitchell, dubbed “the best athlete in the entire draft”, who did anything but get cut. If anything, he delivered some. At 6’9”, 236, with violated pit bull aggression, Mitchell terrorized the rim every chance he could.
“He’s the second-most athletic guy on our basketball team,” Drummond joked, Mitchell snickering in the background. “That’s just for the rumors out there.”
Team comradery? Check.
Caldwell-Pope displayed a prolific scoring knack for a rookie through the Orlando games, along with notable perimeter defense.
Rookie readiness? Check.
Then it was Andre Drummond, who no one watching could forget. With monster performances averaging out to 15.5 points, 14.8 rebounds, 2.5 steals, and 2.0 blocks per game, not to mention a Summer League record of 18 rebounds, the second-year center showed he may have been a little overqualified. And so he got his games to kick back and rest, as he should.
Along Greg Monroe, the Detroit frontcourt future now looks promising with none other than Rasheed Wallace helping coach from the sideline, as he did through the Summer League for the first time. Yup, you read that right: Rasheed Wallace; who better to teach these guys?
Post presence? Check.
Before Summer League was even over, Dumars sat down with—drum roll—20-and-10 power forward, yet somehow not an All-Star yet, free agent Josh Smith. A “productive” five hours of meeting later, fans’ crossed fingers were Twizzlers licorice.
A torturing nine days later, Smith announced which of the three teams he’d met with, Hawks and Rockets among them, and decided he’d be playing for.
Detroit it was.
Post dominance? CHECK.
Billups’ big day, signing with the Pistons, soon followed, and Detroit, who’d just filed for bankruptcy, thought their turbulent series of acquisitions had spoiled them enough. The swaying thought of how point guard Brandon Knight would fit in was cut loose before Busta Rhymes could say Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Knight was traded along with Kris Middleton and Viacheslav Kravtsov to Milwaukee in exchange for Brandon Jennings, easily a top-ten point guard in the league.
A Milky Way of superstars? Check.
“You try to add pieces that fit,” Dumars once said about the offseason. “You try to add guys that you think are going to come here and embrace being a Detroit Piston.”
“This is where I wanted to be,” Smith said. “We’re definitely a playoff team, and we’re definitely a contender.”
“I’m just very happy to be back in Detroit,” Billups said on top of admitting he initially never wanted to leave.
To add onto this, Brandon Jennings had a recent picture posted to Twitter of him wearing a Detroit Bad Boys 1988-89 Champions shirt, along with another picture of him as a youngster with a Grant Hill throwback Pistons jersey on.
Yeah, about wanting the players to “embrace being a Detroit Piston”? Mission accomplished. Check, check, check.
Joe Dumars can’t expect to have maintained the pride in Pistons basketball held last decade. For four years now, they’ve had to settle with the ‘rebuilding process’ label; this roller-coaster summer may have just rebuilt it. (Knock on wood, will ya? Check.)