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Sign up for E-newsQ&A with Joe Dumars - Part III
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KEITH LANGLOIS: Let’s shift to the rookies. We talked early in the week in Vegas and I said that GMs always come out of draft night saying we never expected to get these guys. You said you haven’t really said that much. This year, it was true. Then the week unfolded in Vegas and those guys kept getting even better. Do you feel even more strongly now than you did on draft night?
JOE DUMARS: Here’s what happens. You draft guys, you feel good on draft night, everybody shakes hands and you feel great about it. And then the next day you wake up and immediately you think, OK, this guy has got to show up and show it now. You hold that feeling until you see that guy out on the court. And once you see that guy out on the court, one of two things is going to happen. Either you say, uggghhh, man, I was hoping he looked better. Or you’re going to say, wow, the kid is showing exactly what we thought he was going to show. And that’s what all of those guys did this year. All of those guys showed up in Vegas and did what we expected them to do, or what we hoped they would do. We were pleased with how they played in Summer League.
KL: When you look at your depth chart and try to figure out minutes, you can put a very good rotation together that doesn’t include the rookies. I know what they show in training camp when they get out there with the veterans will dictate a lot of it, but do you see each or any of them having a role this year?
JD: All you can do is hope they have a role. They have to get out there and prove it and earn it. What you want to do is put a team together that can compete with or without their input right away. We used the second pick in the draft on Darko, didn’t play, and won a championship. We used the 23rd pick on Tayshaun Prince and we were going along relatively well and he jumps in and plays for us and takes us to the next level. So what you want to do is build a team where if that young guy can bring something to your team, boy, you’ve gotten even better now. I’ve never really wanted to try to build a team, if I didn’t have to, where I was just depending so much on the young guys. But if they do come through, you’re that much better. That’s where we are now. The fact that Tayshaun emerged helped us that year. The fact that two years ago, Stuckey stepped in and played well – especially when Chauncey went down in the Orlando series – boom, that helps your team jump. Same thing with these guys. If one or two or any of these guys can emerge this year, we’ve gotten that much better as a team. You sit back and you look and you see if any one of them emerges this year, we’re going to feel like we’re a little bit ahead of the curve.
KL: With Daye, I’m not sure exactly what I expected going into Vegas, but he appeared farther along than I would have thought. I think he had two rebounds in the first game and after that he averaged 10½ . There’s been a fixation on his lack of strength, and I know Vegas isn’t NBA caliber, but to rebound like that in a pretty good setting, does that fact alone tell you he might be ready to contribute sooner than you originally might have thought?
JD: None of us ever questioned his ability on the court. When the only question is strength, I’ll take my chances on that. It’s almost like people are conceding he’s good enough. But is he strong enough? Think about the opposite of that. Man, the kid is big, he’s got a great body, he’s strong enough. I don’t know if he’s good enough. Well, I don’t want that. That I don’t want. There’s a long list of guys like that with great bodies, strong as ever, athletic, but you don’t know if they’re good enough to play. No one has questioned whether this kid is good enough. So the kid goes out and he’s the second- or third-leading rebounder of everybody in Vegas. You can’t go out there and average 10 rebounds a game and not have a streak in you that says you’ll stick your nose in there. You have to be willing to stick your nose in there to average 10 rebounds a game. It doesn’t make you any stronger, but it does give you an idea of the mind-set. There’s a difference between a guy not at his maximum strength yet and a guy who’s afraid to stick his nose in there. Here’s a kid that’s not afraid to stick his nose in there. There’ll be times he gets knocked on his butt because he’s not strong enough, but those are two totally different things. I’ve seen some physically strong guys that will not stick their nose in there. And then you see a guy like that who will. So when people question, is he tough enough? That’s so far off-base. All you can question is if he’s strong enough. If he’s strong enough and if he’s tough enough are two completely different things.
KL: DaJuan Summers out in Vegas was a guy that both Darrell Walker and Pat Sullivan said had an NBA-ready body and they played him at both spots, the three and the four, and he held up well. Just talk about what you saw from him and his readiness.
JD: Here’s a guy who’s almost the opposite of Austin in the sense that no one questioned his body and his strength. Everybody said he had an NBA-ready body. What people questioned was his game coming out of Georgetown – didn’t dominate as much as he should have. We looked at him and we didn’t judge him based on having an NBA-ready body. We thought, like so many guys, put in a new environment, in a different role, we liked his ability to really shoot the ball and we had seen him in workouts and felt like here’s a guy that played a great role at Georgetown but we also think he can flourish out of that system. To watch him play the way he did out in Vegas was obviously good for us because for that week to 10 days, he showed in a more open environment, in a different culture, that his game can expand and DaJuan is, certainly, a guy that can play multiple positions, the three and the four, and he has the game to be effective at both of those positions. What he did out in Vegas that was most impressive was he understood when to take those big guys at the four off the dribble and he understood how to use his body with the three guys who weren’t as strong as him. I thought that mental approach was the most impressive thing. Swinging between the three and the four and knowing how to attack when he was at those positions. For a young guy, that was impressive and showed a pretty good basketball IQ. What you hope for with all these young guys is that as they get older and mature and get more experienced in this league, that they become even better at those things.
KL: On draft night, we talked about all three of those guys being, and I think the term you like is “hybrid forward,” a guy who can play both sides. Jonas played mostly at the five, really, in Vegas. Do you still see him as a guy who could play both spots but just because of the way the roster shakes out, as more of a four/five?
JD: Just because of the way the roster shakes out, he looks like more of a four/five for us, a 6-10 guy who can put it on the floor, who can stretch the defense, who’s non-stop hustle. If you look around the league and look at rosters, the more you can have versatile guys on your roster, the better off you are. Less and less now, you find guys pigeon-holed into one position. The fact he played four and five out in Summer League for us, the fact he played some three over in Europe, I think you look at a guy like that and say if he can play every position along the front line, what a nice piece to have.
