But players – and coaches, for that matter – have short horizons by necessity. Team presidents – the good ones, at least – must take the long view. And in the long view, Joe Dumars liked what he saw Monday night in Utah, when the Pistons battled in a tough building against the hottest team of the NBA’s opening week, didn’t get many favorable whistles – how many offensive fouls can wispy Rip Hamilton accumulate? – and still took the game to the final second.

Yup. Joe Dumars liked what he saw. He liked it very much.

And he told Flip Saunders so. “We’re going to be OK,” Dumars told him. “Now I know that we’re going to have a very good team this year.”

Dumars thought so even before Monday night. He knew the opening-night loss to Milwaukee – as horrific as it was – could be written off as an anomaly. Twenty-two turnovers? No, that wasn’t going to happen again. But he made the West Coast trip specifically because he wanted to see how this team would react in Utah, a historically tough place for the Pistons – or any Eastern Conference team – to win.

“I saw what I needed to see,” he said.

The win at Boston last Friday night was nice for the second half Rasheed Wallace put together and the way the Pistons closed out. Coming back 24 hours later to beat a scrappy Memphis team at home was heartening for the signs it indicated about a deeper bench.

But the most pointed indication yet that the Pistons can not only survive in the post-Ben Wallace era but thrive came in that bitter loss to Utah on a night when Hamilton and Chauncey Billups went a combined 7 of 24 and the Pistons took the game to the final possession.

Both Dumars and Saunders wanted to see how their young players – Carlos Delfino and Jason Maxiell, specifically – would react to their first real road test while playing critical minutes. Delfino stroked two deep 3-pointers with confidence, scoring eight points and grabbing four rebounds in 17 productive minutes. If there’s an underrated aspect to his game, it’s the ability to rebound from the two and three spots. Maxiell played with his typical aggression, getting to the line six times in 10 minutes – a trait that could prove invaluable as the season unfolds.

Flip Murray had something of a breakout offensive game with 15 points and no turnovers in 20 minutes while continuing to get more minutes at point guard than shooting guard, where he was expected to play more. As long as Delfino keeps playing well enough to warrant minutes, Saunders will have the luxury of continuing to play Murray at the point. And that puts more reasonable expectations on Lindsey Hunter, who now can concentrate on intense bursts of defensive pressure when the Pistons need to ratchet up tempo.

The ripple effect goes past them, too. If Maxiell keeps doing what he’s doing, the frontcourt won’t have a critical need for the minutes Delfino could provide there. Saunders gets to be creative with his use of frontcourt minutes now, needing only to make certain he doesn’t overuse Prince.

It’s even conceivable that Prince and Delfino could be used in tandem at the forward positions under favorable matchup conditions, Saunders getting away with it because of Delfino’s ability to rebound and Prince’s length on defense. It wouldn’t be a staple of their rotation, but in four- or five-minute stretches, it offers intriguing offensive possibilities. When other teams go really small – Memphis putting Hakim Warrick at center comes to mind – a frontcourt of Prince, Delfino and Maxiell isn’t out of the question if the Pistons are looking buy some minutes for Rasheed Wallace.

All of those things run through the mind of a team president after a loss that burns the back of your throat. The thoughts running through Joe Dumars’ mind as he digested the short-term boulder of the Utah loss were ones he liked. Yup. They were thoughts he liked very much.