`I get to think': Joe Dumars, TSN's Executive of the Year, has turned around the Pistons with the same skills that made him a top player: smarts, a great work ethic and love for his job

Sporting News, The, May 19, 2003 by Sean Deveney

If we really had been paying attention to Detroit back then, we might have seen this coming. On June 6, 2000, the day six-time All-Star Joe Dumars took over as president of basketball operations for a Pistons organization he had served for 15 years, he made clear what had gone wrong with the team. This was the franchise he had helped lead to two championships and NBA dominance a decade earlier, only to watch it slowly slide into mediocrity and insignificance for most of the '90s. The trouble with the Pistons, according to Joe, was that the organization had lost its flair for the unconventional, the derring-do that led it to draft Dennis Rodman and trade for Mark Aguirre and James Edwards. "We got very safe, very complacent," he said upon accepting the job. "Too many obvious picks, too many obvious trades. No risk, no reward."

Nearly three years later, the Team That Joe Built is battling Philadelphia in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. With 5:45 to go in the third quarter of Game 2, Detroit has squandered a 12-point lead and trails, 57-56. Cliff Robinson (acquired in a trade for Jud Buechler and John Wallace in 2001) taps a rebound to rookie Tayshaun Prince (23rd pick in the 2002 draft), who swings the ball to Richard Hamilton (swapped for All-Star Jerry Stackhouse last summer), who then finds Chucky Atkins (acquired with Ben Wallace for Grant Hill in 2000) in the corner. Atkins, filling in for the injured Chauncey Billups (free-agent pickup in 2002), nails a 3-pointer that gives the Pistons the lead in a game they eventually win in overtime.

Complacent? Not anymore. In just three years, the quiet kid from Natchitoches, La., has rebuilt the Detroit roster. Only Michael Curry remains from the team Dumars inherited. Back in 2000, just two weeks into the job--"I was still setting up my office," Dumars says--Hill told Dumars he would be leaving to sign with Orlando. It was both a curse and a blessing, though Dumars couldn't see the blessing at the time. The Pistons would be losing a star player, but Dumars would be getting a blank slate, a team he could remake in his own image. He wanted hard work and good character; he wanted unselfish, defense-oriented players. When Hill left, Dumars managed to get Atkins and Ben Wallace, who has gone on to become a two-time defensive player of the year, in a sign-and-trade deal. "He set out to get players like himself," says Magic senior vice president Pat Williams. "He wanted as many Joe Dumarses as he could get. And he's done it."

Even after last season, when the Pistons won 50 games (an 18-game turnaround) and lost to the Celtics in the conference semifinals, Dumars felt things were not quite right. "My thinking was, this can't be the be-all of who we are, he says. "A 50-win season, second round of the playoffs, we have reached Nirvana? I don't think so. So I started beating the drums right after last season. I started the day after the season ended."

That's how the Pistons wound up swapping Stackhouse for Hamilton, a move many questioned at the time. But Dumars' never-satisfied approach has worked, even in the playoffs. While the Pistons have been written off because of their lack of star power (they're the only team in the playoffs without a maximum-contract player on the roster), the contributions they've gotten from all angles have been the surprise of the postseason--that or their comeback from a 3-1 first-round deficit against the Magic. Prince played just 42 games in the regular season, but he has become the darling of the playoffs, averaging 16.3 points since Game 5 of the first round and leading the Game 2 win against Philadelphia with his clutch shooting and dominance of veteran Aaron McKie.

Billups established himself as the team's go-to player, with 77 points in Games 6 and 7 of the first round, but he reinjured his left ankle in the opener of the 76ers series. Atkins came through, though, with 23 points in Game 2. One knock on Hamilton before the trade was his defense, yet he has done a fine job chasing and harassing Sixers jitterbug Allen Iverson.

"We don't have two shooting stars (who) take all the shots," Atkins says. "Everybody on this team can attack you. The other team does not know where it is going to come from. Sometimes we don't know where it will come from. Seems like every guy we sign or trade for does something along the way."

If the Pistons are a team without stars, maybe the real star is the genial fellow who leads the front office, the guy who finds the guys who do something along the way. As the Pistons press on in the playoffs, drawing puzzled looks from casual fans who thought Tayshaun Prince was a Disney character and who might mistake Mehmet Okur for a French dessert, the one recognizable Piston is the one who no longer wears a uniform: Dumars. He's using the same things that made him a popular player--hard work and deep thinking--in his current job. "I have always considered myself a cerebral player, a thinking player," Dumars says. "That is what this job is all about. It allows me to sit here, look at the team and see where we are going. For me, this is the ultimate basketball job. I get to do what I do best. I get to think."