Sometimes when I watch the Pistons I wonder, “What was Joe Dumars (Pistons GM) thinking?” I don’t mean that in an attacking way. It’s more out of curiosity. I’m curious if he thought he would be able to sign a superstar free agent in the infamous summer of 2010 or if it was always his plan to try to steal some guys in 2009 when other teams wouldn’t want to sacrifice their cap room (he got Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, but with the contracts they signed they were far from “steals”). He took Chauncey Billups out of the core that had taken the pistons to 6 straight conference finals. Did he know Chauncey was the linchpin of his core? How could he not know? How could he not know that that was his team’s leader? (Tangent: The 2004 championship Pistons are often talked about as the one team that won a title without a clear-cut alpha dog. Their starting five (Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace & Ben Wallace) was talented all-around and everyone seemed to be an equally necessary piece of the puzzle because no one stood out as being clearly more dominant than the others. I’d say the way the Pistons broke down after the Chauncey trade and the boon he provided to the Nuggets show that Chauncey was in fact the alpha-dog on that team, we just didn’t see it because no one has ever earned that alpha-dog position for his intangibles. Chauncey is a unique presence on the floor and in the locker room. He is essentially part of the coaching staff. If you ever get a chance to watch him do a court side interview, do it. I think he enjoys it because he likes discussing the game and specific strategy. Listening to Chauncey in a court side interview is probably what it would be like to listen to a coach in a court side interview if coaches didn’t hate giving court side interview so fucking much). I guess he might have thought that between A.I. and Rodney Stuckey he’d get enough out of the point guard position to let the veterans on the team carry them to the playoffs. Unfortunately, the veterans on the team hated the trade, hated their coach, and eventually stopped giving a shit. They went out and played–I’m always weary of accusing athletes of dogging it unless the team is legitimately, unapologetically tanking–but they definitely weren’t hungry the way they once were. Anyway, they ended up stumbling to the playoffs last year as the 8th seed and getting swept by the Cavs. You could argue that had they gotten matched up with the Magic in round one they could have upset their way into the second round (they had the Magic’s number all year). Even so, they weren’t making the conference finals. They had fired Michael Curry, traded their team leader, exiled Allen Iverson, with Rasheed all but out the door by the end of the season. The Pistons conference finals appearance dynasty was done. Add to the mix that the economy had turned the corner and fallen down a flight of stairs (stole that from American Dad) and that Detroit was quickly becoming America’s forgotten city, and I think Dumars found himself in a severely awkward position. He made a move in order to save some money in the form of cap room for the 2010 season, but in the process killed the franchise’s winning culture, which killed interest in the team, which cost the team money in revenue, and perhaps (this is total speculation on my part) motivated the owner to say “Joe, don’t let us have another season like this. We can’t afford it. Get whomever you can to make our team competitive next season.” So now the pistons are kind of stuck with a core that consists of two great championship-calibur complimentary pieces that happen to be past their prime in Richard Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince, two free agents they settled on and then overpaid for (both of whom contribute little more than scoring, which, I imagine, is why they both came off the bench in this game against the Knicks) in Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, and a point guard that hasn’t lived up to the expectations he created by overachieving in the playoffs in 2008 as a rookie. I feel like Joe Dumars is playing 5-card draw and knows he doesn’t have a winning hand, but can’t decide which cards to hold, and he knows he needs to be careful because his chips are low and a few more hands like this will mean the end of the line. He has a pair of 3s (Gordon and Villanueva), 7/8 of clubs (Hamilton and Prince), and a 10 of diamonds (Stuckey). If he had an ace in his hand, he could drop the rest of his hand and say “fuck it, I’m going to war with this ace and if I come up with nothing so be it.” But he doesn’t have that star player around whom he can rebuild. I think a lot of fans criticize GMs who waste years of a superstar’s career by trying to rebuild around him and him alone, but what else are they supposed to do? Officially going into rebuilding mode is already a risk in terms of ticket sales, PR, and career longevity. Rebuilding with NO prospects? Semi-suicidal. The only time I really see it happen is when it’s forced upon a franchise like the Grizzlies before this year or the Cavs before LeBron. So, I guess my first question, “what was Joe Dumars thinking?”, was really just a roundabout way of asking “what IS Joe Dumars thinking?”, and at this point, does it really matter?