AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – Joe Dumars would never show up among the NBA’s league leaders in self-promotion, but he admits a certain level of satisfaction in pulling off a nearly impossible career double-double: As a player, Joe D and Isiah Thomas went to four All-Star games together from the Pistons backcourt, and as team president he’s now sent Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton, acquired in one wildly successful off-season, to two straight All-Star games.

“I feel good about that,” he said as the 2007 NBA All-Star game approached. “I feel good about the connection – being a part of a backcourt like that and building a backcourt like that. I don’t dwell on it a whole lot, but when both of those guys were named for a second straight year, I feel good about that. I feel like I understand what it takes to get there. Having a backcourt that’s multiyear All-Stars, that’s a pretty good situation to have.”

The reunion of men with a similar line item on their resumes wouldn’t require much more than a broom closet. It would consist of Joe Dumars and Jerry West – The Logo – who played alongside Lakers teammate Gail Goodrich in the 1972 and ’73 All-Star games and, as Lakers general manager, sent Magic Johnson and Norm Nixon to the ’82 game.

The difference is Joe D had to work a lot harder to put this Pistons backcourt together, signing Billups as a free agent after he’d bounced around with five teams in his first five NBA seasons, never earning a full-time starter’s role in any of them, and trading for Hamilton with a bargaining chip of Jerry Stackhouse, who was known to be demanding big money heading into the final year of his contract.

That’s really where credit for the Billups-Hamilton union starts, with a conversation Dumars and Stackhouse had late in the summer of 2002.

“He said he wanted a big-dollar extension and I said, ‘Stack, we are probably not going to do that.’ We laughed and he told me I needed to find him a home where he could get that extension. That’s how we left it.”

A few weeks later, after scanning NBA rosters and engaging in the necessary salary-cap machinations, Dumars phoned Washington Wizards executive Wes Unseld, who reported to Michael Jordan at the time but essentially was in charge of day-to-day operations, to gauge his interest. Unseld was intrigued by the chance to acquire Stackhouse, a two-time All-Star who’d averaged nearly 30 points a game in 2001, and told Dumars he’d run it past Jordan and get back to him that night. He did. They both spent the night working on the spare parts to make the trade work. The next day, the deal was done.

“Two days,” Dumars said. “It was that quick. The only other team we even talked to about Stackhouse was Dallas, but there was nothing there. They were talking briefly about (Michael) Finley, but his (contract) was so big at the time, there was no deal.”

The deal caught the NBA off-guard, partly because there had been no whispers it was coming, partly because Stackhouse had the far grander reputation, even though Hamilton had averaged 20 a game in his final season in Washington, his third in the NBA.

“I loved the fact (Hamilton) could score 20,” Dumars said. “We had a two-guard in Stack who could score 20 to 25 a night, but I looked at Rip as a guy who could be that consistent scorer for you and what I loved was his ability to move without the ball, not having to dominate the ball to get his 20 to 25 a night. He really reminded me of a young Reggie Miller, a guy that could move without the ball and put points up on the board.

“I’m sure the deal appeared the way it did to some people because Stackhouse was definitely the more established player, but I knew we were getting a 20-point scorer back. It wasn’t like he’d been averaging five or six a game. But what people focused on was one was an All-Star who scored 20 a game and the other one wasn’t.”

There was also this that appealed to Dumars about Hamilton: He saw him as an ideal partner, even then, for his newly signed free-agent point guard, both in playing style and in career progression. He not only thought they would fit together, but grow together.

“I think they complement each other perfectly,” Dumars said. “Chauncey is more controlled, steady, not a flashy-type point guard who will deliver the ball and spot up and really shoot the ball. Rip moves without the ball, he uses the entire court to get off a good shot, and whenever he hits that spot, Chauncey already knows to slide to the other open spot in case Rip has to kick it to him.

“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.”

Billups and Hamilton knew little of each other beyond the recommendation of common friend Tyronn Lue that they would love playing together before they were made teammates by the Stackhouse trade, but it didn’t take long for them to discover their compatibility.

“As soon as we stepped on the floor,” Hamilton says today with his characteristic cocksuredness. “If you watched our whole careers, our first year we got to the Eastern Conference finals, our second year we won a championship together.”

“We talked about it before we even started playing together,” Billups said. “We talked about trying to be the best backcourt in the league. We had a half-season in, then once we started to become a little more cohesive, we felt like we could do it, and ever since then we’ve been on the same path. Before every single game, before we go to the captain’s circle, we always look at each other and say, ‘Let’s do what we do and keep proving ourselves. We’re the best people on the court – let’s prove that every single night.’ ”

Saunders coached some great guards during his run in Minnesota, but admits he’s never had such a complete and potent backcourt as the Billups-Hamilton pairing.

“Rip’s ability to move without the ball so well and Chauncey’s ability – you can’t cheat off Chauncey because he can shoot the ball so well. They understand each other. They’ve got a relationship both on and off the court. If Rip’s going haywire and he’s trying to score all the time, Chauncey’s not afraid to slow him down or go away from him a little bit. The understanding they have of each other and the respect they have makes them so unique. They’ll probably be always tied at the hip because of that.”

OK by them.

“I’m like an older brother to him,” said Billups, 30 to Hamilton’s 29, Hamilton’s birthday falling on Valentine’s Day in this pairing made possible by a basketball Cupid named Dumars. “When he gets out of control, not a lot of guys can say the things that I say to him, and him say, humbly, ‘All right, you’re right,’ and vice versa – even though I never get out of control. It’s been a very balanced relationship.”

“We cuss each other out all the time on the floor,” Hamilton laughs. “When I’m out there going too fast, he’ll tell me something. And when he’s out there shooting 3’s, I tell him to drive and cuss him out. That’s the type of relationship we have. We know we want one thing and that’s to win basketball games. That’s the bottom line. And if we see that the other person can do something better out there, our egos – all that pride and all that stuff – that’s all put to the side to win games. That’s my homey. We’re like brothers.”

Dumars never needed any calming down from Thomas, but there was a mentoring process when he arrived in Detroit from McNeese State to slide into the backcourt alongside a guy who was already a four-time All-Star. In both personality and playing style, though, Billups is more Dumars – straightforward and devoid of flash – and Hamilton more Thomas in emotional combustibility. Yet the old backcourt meshed as quickly and as seamlessly as the current model.

“You have to know how to play off the guy you’re playing with,” Dumars said. “I thought it fit because that’s who I was – just a guy who got it done without a whole lot of flash. All too often you see potentially really good backcourts together that don’t work because the guards don’t match. They run into each other.

“You’ve got to get guys who know how to play off of each other. Chauncey defers to Rip moving without the ball and Rip defers to Chauncey spotting up with the ball. Isiah and I did the same thing. I would watch him and see what he was doing and then I would make the adjustment, or he saw what I was doing. If I was posting a guy, he knew to give me space.

Thomas went to All-Star games for each of his first 12 seasons in the league and Dumars went to six, the Hall of Fame pair going as a unit to four straight starting in 1990 with the Pistons between the two Bad Boys titles. So Billups and Hamilton have a way to go – and they fully acknowledge as much.

“We haven’t talked about (their place in history), we really haven’t,” Billups said. “But sometime when the season ends, you get a chance to reflect a little bit and talk about our place sometime. We look up there and see Joe and Zeke and we’re putting our mark down, too, in franchise history as second best to those guys. So it feels good to have a backcourt mate like Rip, every single night going to war with you.”

“Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars,” Hamilton said, “both of those names are on the rafters. That’s the only thing that matters – going out and trying to win championships. We came in together and our job is to try to win as many championships as possible. That’s all we look at.”

“I’m happy for those guys,” Dumars says of the Billups-Hamilton All-Star acknowledgment. “Especially for Rip. Sometimes I feel he’s the forgotten guy and he shouldn’t be. Of all of our guys, he shows up and gives you a flat-out, 100 percent effort every single night, so I felt especially good for him that he was recognized again. He deserved that. And so does Chauncey.”

But Dumars, while patting his All-Star acquisitions on the back, isn’t above reminding them of their place in the pantheon of Pistons backcourts.

“We talked about it a year or so ago,” he said. “They said they were getting close, that they were getting there. I said, ‘OK, call me when you get there. Call me when you get to 16 more All-Star games.’ ”

Now they only have 14 more to go before they can make that phone call.