The Washington Wizards had a peripatetic young shooting guard who at various times had come under Michael Jordan’s withering stare. Dumars went fishing. He liked Stackhouse just fine, but he wasn’t prepared to offer the huge contract sought by Stackhouse, who was coming up on the last year of his original deal. A North Carolina native who starred at the University of North Carolina, Dumars knew Stackhouse’s name recognition couldn’t hurt in ACC country.

Wes Unseld, doing Michael Jordan’s day-to-day bidding, expressed immediate interest when Dumars proposed the deal: Stackhouse for Rip Hamilton, a 1999 lottery pick from national champion Connecticut whose scoring average had risen from 9.0 to 18.1 to 20.0 in his three years in the league. From the first inquiry to signing off on the trade on both ends took two days. Dumars had both solved his Stackhouse conundrum and found what he envisioned as a perfect partner for Chauncey Billups.

He couldn’t have known how right he was.

While Dumars was thinking more about the synergy of their playing styles – Billups as a combo point guard who could score as well as distribute, Hamilton as a 20-point scorer who didn’t need to dominate the basketball to get his points – the new teammates soon learned that their temperaments were perfect complements, as well.

“My poise and my demeanor and all of that kind of meshes with him being so relentless,” Billups said the other night as the Pistons backcourt was about to embark on its third consecutive tandem All-Star appearance. “He’s so all over the place that I bring him to the right level, and I think him being so up and wired and ready to go and so aggressive brings me to a point where I need to be. It’s been perfect.”

Billups and Hamilton will be joined for All-Star Weekend by a third Piston, Rasheed Wallace being named to replace injured Celtics star Kevin Garnett. That’s one off the franchise record for All-Stars in a season – those three plus Ben Wallace made the team during the Pistons’ 64-win 2005-06 season – and the first time the Pistons have had three All-Stars since 1992 when Dennis Rodman joined the gold standard of Pistons backcourt tandems, Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars.

Billups and Hamilton are closing on Thomas and Dumars in one relevant statistic, at least. Though they trail Thomas and Dumars in NBA titles by one – and Hall of Fame plaques by one apiece – they’re also now just one off Thomas and Dumars’ mark of four tandem appearances in the All-Star game, which gives Dumars a sense of pride.

“I feel good about the connection,” Dumars said, “being a part of a backcourt like that and building a backcourt like that. I don’t dwell on it a whole lot, but … I feel like I understand what it takes to get there.

“They complement each other because they never get in each other’s way. They do different things that interconnect perfectly. You wouldn’t want a point guard running all over the court, trying to get his shot, because he’d run into Rip. And you wouldn’t want just a spot-up shooter with Chauncey, because you need somebody else moving. That’s what Chauncey does – he spots up.”

Though they have remained fundamentally the same players since arriving in Detroit, their games – individually and collectively – have continued to evolve. At the All-Star break, both are playing with tremendous efficiency. Both have shooting percentages that beat their career highs, Hamilton at an even 50 percent and Billups at 45. Hamilton is shooting 48 percent from the 3-point arc and Billups is at 41 percent in more than twice as many attempts (221-90). Billups is fourth in the league in assist-to-turnover ratio at a superb 3.65:1 and only Chris Paul among the other leaders in that category can match him as a scoring threat.

And, not to be underestimated, is how they’ve handled what could have been a delicate situation – helping nurture the two rookie guards Dumars drafted in last June’s first round.

“They are All-Stars this year in a different way than they’ve been in years past,” Dumars said. “We asked them to come back this year and to do something different than they’ve done the previous two years. We’ve asked them to play less minutes. We’ve asked them to be more efficient. We’ve asked them to not only mentor young guys at their positions, we’ve asked them to embrace these young guys.

“That’s a lot to ask of a backcourt. And for them to take that on and for us to still have an elite record and them be recognized as All-Stars probably makes it their most impressive year.”

Helping the acclimation process of Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo, of course, could pay dividends down the road not only for the Pistons, but for Billups and Hamilton, as well. Billups, for his part, said he hasn’t felt so fresh at the All-Star break since … well, since the last time he wasn’t an All-Star.

“I feel so much fresher this year,” he said. “It’s been years since I’ve felt like this – ’04, really, when we had a good bench and played them extended minutes. I feel real fresh. That’s the only way you can keep a nucleus like ours together that’s been together for so long and is getting older. You’ve got to have some young, athletic guys coming off the bench, able to play in some tough situations. That’s why we’ve been able to be so good this year.”

All-Star good. For the third year in a row.