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Sign up for E-newsJoe Dumars Q&A - Part I
KEITH LANGLOIS: Three losses in the last week to struggling teams since beating San Antonio on the road. You’ve been around long enough as a player and an executive to know how fans react to every win and loss, but step back and give us the big picture as you see it.
JOE DUMARS: First and most importantly, we are disappointed with some of these early-season losses that we’ve taken so far. That’s the first thing. Even with the transition we’re going through, we still expect to win those games and we should. In saying that, we’re making a transition on the fly right now. It’s tough enough making the transition if you do it over the off-season, but to do it as the season is unfolding and having to play games makes it especially tough sometimes. I understand that there are going to be some rough patches. But even with that being said, I still expect us to win the games we’re supposed to win while we’re going through this transition. My perspective is I’m disappointed we’ve taken some of these early-season losses to teams we should beat, I expect some rough patches, but even knowing there are going to be some rough patches, I have been such an adamant opponent of excuses that I have to be careful how I answer so it doesn’t sound like an excuse. But I can’t sit here and pretend that we’re not going through a transition, especially at that particular position. So that’s my perspective as I step back and look at the big picture, but when I see our team I know that this stretch we’re going through right now is not going to define our entire season. My hope would be that this stretch we’re going through right now ends up being a footnote in a successful season.
KL: I know there’s no science to this and I don’t know that there’s a reliable history of looking at teams that make big in-season trades and then trying to figure out what the timetable would be on how long you could expect the transition to last, but what does your gut tell you about how long it will be before people feel reasonably comfortable?
JD: I bet I’ve had that question asked of me by about a half a dozen different journalists. I understand why that question is asked, but if there’s one team that can’t get bogged down with trying to put a number of games on something it’s us. And the reason I say that is because everybody from the West Coast to the East Coast has judged the Pistons by what they do after the regular season is over with. To all of a sudden changes the rules and say let’s judge them now … no, no, no. Let’s continue to judge us the way we’ve been judged before. We’ve been judged like that … I had a media person in New York say, you know, you’re right, we’ve judged you guys for the last eight years based on how your season finishes. So I said to him, let’s don’t change the rules now. Let’s continue to judge the Pistons by how they play the season out. It would be foolish of me to put a number of games as to make any kind of determination. It does no good. I could tell you X number and that comes around and we’re still going to be judged by how we do at the end of the season.
KL: You’re sitting at 11-9 right now and a week ago you were 11-6, which if you carry that out over a season is a reasonable winning percentage. But if you look at today’s NBA standings, you’re sitting in a place you haven’t been very often – I believe the No. 7 seed in the East. Do you get a little anxious as you look at the transition period maybe affecting your playoff seeding down the road?
JD: No. That was news to me. I didn’t even know that. That’s where we’re sitting right now – seventh, huh? I didn’t even know that. You know what? When we’re winning and when we’re losing, I may know we have the best record in the East at times. But I really don’t look at the standings. I really don’t. What I do is I watch us and watch how we’re playing and I judge decisions and my perspective on how we’re playing, irrespective of the record. Right now, I’m happy that the playoffs are not starting in December, because the way we’re playing right now and the transition we’re going through right now, it would be a tough road. I’m just happy they give you 82 games to get your team together and to get them focused and locked in the right way to play and we’re going to need all 82 of those games to build what we’re trying to build. I would only say this. Seven or eight years to get our team to the point to where everybody knew what to expect from our team, I think it would be extremely unrealistic to think we were going to make a couple of major changes like we have and get those same type of results in a month. I definitely don’t want to struggle like this right now. That’s for certain. But none of us are standing on a ledge. And I understand how it works. I swear I do. I understand how it affects fans and media and all of that. I get it. But you have to understand that it’s just not the perspective I come from. My perspective is 180 degrees different than the other side. I can’t live in that rollercoaster world of we win three games in a row and oh, my god, we’re on our way to the championship; we lose thre games in a row and oh, my gosh, worst thing ever. You can’t live in that world and do this. I watch how we play more than anything else. There have been times we’ve been winning games and I don’t like the way we’ve played and there are times we’ve hit some struggles and I say, I like the direction we’re heading. Right now, it’s probably neither for me. Right now, it’s watching a team trying to find itself. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m just watching a team trying to find itself. Get down big, can come back. Get up big, can lose the lead. That’s a team trying to find itself and that’s what we’re working through right now.
KL: Even in my days in the mainstream media, I was always careful – and I think some weren’t as prudent as they should have been about saying that every time a team lost, well, the effort just wasn’t there. I think a lot of times what looks like a lack of effort is a byproduct of a lack of confidence. This team, even though the guts of this team, at least, has gone through their share of adversity, has never had its confidence rocked. Are you seeing any signs of that right now?
JD: I think more than confidence, what you’re seeing is uncertainty. And what I mean by that is this. You do it the same way for so long, you kind of just know how you’re going to win and damn near how you’re going to lose. There’s a pattern to how you’re going to do things. You know who’s going to call what play. You know what shot is going to be taken. And so there’s a certain comfort level that comes with that, even when you’re down, even when you’re losing games. Right now, we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to close out games, how we’re going to come back on teams, how we’re going to get big stops when we need them. That may be confidence. That may be a byproduct of it, too.
KL: So kind of rethinking things that might have been instinctive for five years?
JD: Exactly. Now, that’s not the instinctive thing to do. We all knew what plays were going to be run. The fans knew, the media knew, I knew and we all kind of understood. And right now we’re out of that comfort zone. Now you may see some looks on some guys’ faces where we’re not sure how we’re going to do this right now. We’ll work our way through it. We’ll figure out a way through it. We’ll all get on the same page.
