Anything’s Possible

“If you come back with the same core,” Dumars said Monday in his first public comments since the Pistons lost to Cleveland in the Eastern Conference finals, “this would be the first time they’re coming back with this mandate.

“Complacency is the worst thing you can have in sports. That’s not going to be the calling card of our team going forward. That’s been the tag, and deservedly so a lot of times. I’m not going to sit here and defend it. But it won’t be the calling card going forward. Either you play with that sense of urgency or you don’t. At this level you can’t sit back. Status quo just doesn’t get it. And we won’t be status quo.”

Dumars said he was “disappointed but not discouraged, and there’s a difference,” with the way the playoffs unfolded. He said that while it’s likely the Pistons will experience some roster turnover this summer, he wasn’t inclined to make change just for change’s sake.

“We’re too good right now – we’re still too good a team – just to go out and change the parts and hope it works,” Dumars said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

In the face of strong media and public sentiment to do something dramatic, Dumars said he’s received many calls from rival general managers hoping to get good players from the Pistons on the cheap.

“I want to give a lot of you guys credit for making it seem like we’ve got a fire sale,” he said. “I’ve been getting some calls – crazy deals. People are crazy. We don’t have a fire sale going. We’ll make a change – and we’ll make a significant change if we have to. If something comes along that’s a legitimate deal. But I’m not going to take guys on the inactive list for one of my starters.”

Even if the four core starters who’ve been together since the 2004 championship season – Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace – all return, he still expects more reliance on young players, a transition that began last season with Jason Maxiell’s emergence as a frontcourt asset. He wants assertive and athletic young players who will challenge those veterans for playing time.

“Maxiell has shown that he’s more than ready to step in. But these other young guys are going to get an opportunity, too. Amir Johnson. We’ve got to keep bringing in young blood – young blood, new blood, athleticism. It’s time for that influx to start having a serious impact going forward. We won’t just go forward with the same old same old. You’ll see new people, new blood, new faces out on the court for the Pistons.

And an emerging young presence should have the added benefit of reinvigorating the starters.

“You can change a sense of urgency,” he said. “If you’ve been playing 38 minutes a game here and you’re saying, ‘I can’t sustain that the whole season and through the playoffs,’ then don’t complain when we cut you to 30 minutes. You cut the minutes back and you say, ‘OK, I want the intensity. We’re not going to keep you out there for 40 minutes a night.’

“You just change the minutes around. If we went forward and say we’re gong to keep playing our core guys 40 minutes a night, you can’t do that. That doesn’t work. I can tell you firsthand you can’t pout those guys out there 40 minutes every night and then grind through the playoffs. What you do is say we’re not going to ask you to do that. Don’t complain, though, when you play 30 minutes a night. I don’t want to hear it. This is the way it’s going to be. That’s how you address that.

Dumars said that while everyone is held accountable for the playoff disappointment, it would be wrong to single out any particular player or coach Flip Saunders.

“When you sit in this seat you always have to be objective about judging it,” he said. “To sit here and just say it was the coach would be very shortsighted of me. When you bog down like that, it’s not just one particular area. We had guys missing open shots, we had guys missing assignments. We’d have to go down a list of things that causes you to bog down like that. I’m not going to sit here and throw Flip under the bus because we bogged down in the conference finals. But internally there is nothing untouched in terms of addressing all that.”

Dumars said Billups’ struggles against Cleveland didn’t alter his view that retaining his point guard remains the biggest off-season priority.

“One playoff series doesn’t change the view, especially when you’re looking long term. Hypothetically, if it does change your view and you say, Well, maybe we’ve got to go in a difference direction, who is that?”

On other matters: