But he still needed to be sold on what he couldn’t see in Tayshaun Prince.

And for that he enlisted the help of his director of player personnel, Scott Perry.

“I told Scott before we brought him in to work him out before the draft, ‘I want you to bring in the toughest guy you can find to go against Tayshaun.’ He brought this guy in and he was just an animal.”

This was the spring of 2002, after the Detroit Pistons that Joe Dumars was in the midst of rebuilding had overachieved their way to a 50-win regular season but were bounced in five games by a mediocre Boston team in the second round of the playoffs.

Dumars had overhauled the character of the team in his two seasons on the job. But with veteran Michael Curry the nominal starter at small forward, he knew the Pistons still needed a major influx of talent. And with only the 23rd pick in the draft, he knew he’d have to swing for the fences on some player that came with a question mark in the eyes of many.

The question mark on Tayshaun Prince was more an exclamation point – which, coincidentally, also described his physique. Prince was tantalizingly long but almost painfully thin. During a four-year career playing at college basketball’s highest level for storied Kentucky, he took part in a whopping 135 games and saw his scoring average increase every season, topping out at 17.5 as a senior. But at 6-foot-9, with a wing span that effectively made him even taller, Prince had to stuff a few training-table biscuits in his pocket to touch 200 pounds.

So NBA teams wanted to know how tough he was. And they wanted some assurance, even if his heart was willing, that his frame would hold up over the grind of 82 games plus the postseason.

“That’s what everybody was checking for at that point,” Prince says today, his trademark soft-spokenness belying the bewilderment he felt. Couldn’t scouts see his production in the wildly competitive Southeastern Conference? Didn’t his four years at Kentucky already prove his mettle? “Every team that passed me up, it was that reason. And there were teams that had me come and work out for them just to lift weights.

“It all boils down to, can a guy play basketball? I don’t care how big or how little a guy is. If he can play the game, he can play the game.”

But the Pistons wanted to see how he’d play the game against a roughneck. So Perry invited San Diego State’s Randy Holcomb to Auburn Hills, ostensibly for a draft audition, but more to push the guy that really intrigued both him and Dumars to his physical limits.

“A physical small forward,” Dumars recalls. “Strong as a bull. He jammed Tayshaun into the basket one time, just … BAM! And Tayshaun dropped to the floor.”

“Randy played on the wild side,” Perry said. “Very strong, very athletic, kind of throws his body all around. They’re matched up in a one-on-one drill, Tayshaun goes to the rim and Randy just knocked the heck out of him. Knocked him into the basket support. Tayshaun hit it hard and then he hit the floor hard, laid there. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, geez, I sure hope he’s not hurt.’ ”

The truth was, he showed up hurt that day, a Friday. He’d just come from workouts for other NBA teams that Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday was in Chicago, where the Bulls had him doing some crazy stuff with medicine balls.

“I got to Detroit, woke up the next morning and my back was all messed up. Once Randy fouled me and I fell into the basket support … my back was already tight, as it was.”

Perry and Dumars both held their breath.

So did Tayshaun Prince.

“And then he popped up. And he said, ‘All right, let’s go,’ ” Dumars remembers, “and I looked around and said, ‘That’s my guy. That’s my guy right there.’ ”

If his conviction needed any bolstering, it came immediately.

“He gets up, checks the ball to Randy, because he’s still on offense, and he went right back at the basket,” Perry said. “I was sold. Ninety percent of guys playing probably would have settled on a jump shot and not challenged him. When he did that, that answered any questions right there.”

Yup, Joe Dumars had found his guy.

Except he wasn’t at all sure his guy would get passed over 22 times before the Pistons’ turn came up. Go back and look at the 2002 draft. It was remarkably unremarkable. Yao Ming has been a solid No. 1 choice and Amare Stoudemire a steal at No. 9. But with rare exception, the rest of that draft is littered with busts or mediocrity. Some might still prefer Denver’s Nene for his growth potential, but there’s not another player beyond Yao and Stoudemire taken in that first round with the resume and the future of Tayshaun Prince.

As the late-June draft approached, Dumars picked up signals that Houston at No. 15 and Phoenix at No. 22 held interest in Prince.

“I was holding my breath,” he said. “Once it got to around 15, you’re sitting there, and just when they’re ready to call out the name, you’re thinking, ‘I don’t want to hear T-t-t come out of their mouth.’ ”

What came out of Houston’s mouth was a tongue-twister, Bostjan Nachbar. Phoenix went for Stanford shooter Casey Jacobsen, one pick after Portland grabbed another athletic small forward, Qyntel Woods, who went right behind this forgettable string of players deemed better NBA prospects than Tayshaun Prince: Marcus Haislip, Fred Jones, Nachbar, Jiri Welsch, Juan Dixon, Curtis Borchardt, Ryan Humphrey and Kareem Rush.

Yikes!

Prince proved to Dumars during his rookie year that his faith was justified, but he had a hard time winning the confidence of then-Pistons coach Rick Carlisle, who preferred Curry, a known quantity. But when the Pistons fell behind Orlando 3-1 in their first-round playoff series that spring, Carlisle turned to Prince in desperation to help contain the Magic’s mercurial Tracy McGrady. There was no keeping him out of the lineup after that.

The next season – Carlisle gone and Larry Brown on board – Prince moved solidly into the starting lineup and proved invaluable during the playoffs as the Pistons stunned the basketball world by not just beating the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, but dismantling them.

Yet he was still the fifth Beatle, last in the pecking order behind the Wallaces – brute-strength Ben, the pillar of a defense-first champion, and stir-the-pot Rasheed, the final piece to the championship puzzle – and the NBA’s best backcourt, Mr. Big Shot, Chauncey Billups, and the Energizer Bunny, Rip Hamilton. They all had a calling card, a shtick.

Tayshaun Prince had a frozen image – coming out of nowhere to swat away that Reggie Miller breakaway layup, as big as any play in the Pistons’ championship run.

All four of his fellow starters were All-Stars a year ago. Pistons coach Flip Saunders, who has come to appreciate Prince’s subtle influences on a game in the year since taking over for Brown, thinks this is the season Prince becomes an All-Star – officially.

“He should have been last year, in our minds,” Saunders said.

Magic Johnson, another player who defied positional pigeon-holing, once said that great players should add a missing element to their game every offseason. That’s a little tough for Prince, who came to the NBA as a polished player if not a finished product. He might have room for improvement, but there’s not one area of his game that has ever counted as a liability.

“I never concentrate on one thing,” Prince said, “because you try to get better at just one thing and the other things are going to weaken a little bit. I pretty much do a little bit of everything in the summer. That’s how it should be. When I get on the floor, there are going to be situations I’ll be in when I have to do something different.”

“He’s so multitalented, it’s hard to pinpoint one thing,” Lindsey Hunter said. “He’s an excellent passer, he can score the basketball, he can shoot the basketball, he can defend. I think the thing he also brings to the table is his leadership and being more vocal on the court and that type of thing. He has no problem doing that.”

To be sure, it might have surprised outsiders when the Pistons named Prince captain along with Billups and Hamilton during the preseason. Dumars has sensed those qualities in Prince all along.

“As you watch him, you realize this is a kid with tremendous basketball IQ, which goes unsaid way too much,” Dumars said. “When people speak of Tayshaun, for whatever reason, it’s never mentioned how smart he is. I tell people a couple of things about Tayshaun.

“First of all, he’s the smartest guy on this team. He has the highest basketball IQ. The second thing I always say is that if there’s a guy on this team who could make the transition to the seat I’m sitting in right now, it’s him. He has that perspective. He has that kind of depth to him. And discipline. He has the type of discipline it takes to sit here.”

“Basketball IQ has a lot to do with playing the game,” Prince said. “Watching basketball, playing the game, playing under veteran people, playing different positions, all those kinds of things. You can have a basketball IQ without even playing the game, but your IQ gets better depending on what you do on the basketball court.

“Dating back to when I was little, I was always the tallest in my class in school, so I always played center. Then in high school, I was about 6-7, and the coach knew I could dribble, so he used me at point guard. Over the course of high school, I played some two and some three, and I got to college and even played some four. That has a lot to do with it.”

There’s something else Dumars has come to greatly admire about Prince – his unflappability.

“So many times, the last couple of years I’ve looked out on the court and he’s been the youngest starter – but he’s also been the most steady, the most calm, the most stable. He is like this” – and now Joe Dumars is holding his hand, palm down, at eye level, on the same plane as the horizon, and moving it left to right on a line – “and it’s unusual to find that from your youngest starter. You expect that from your veterans. But he is, to me, the stabilizing force. And you’ve got to have guys – you have got to have guys – like that in your lineup.”

Perry was well acquainted with Prince at every step of his development. He first spotted him while Perry was an assistant coach at Michigan during the days the Wolverines were prominent national recruiters and Prince was a rising phenom at California prep power Dominguez Hills in Compton. Then Perry was head coach at Eastern Kentucky when Prince arrived in Lexington and even coached against him during Prince’s freshman season.

“I’ve been watching him since ninth grade,” Perry said. “The thing that always stood out about him was that he liked to play and he was obviously a very smart player. And his versatility. He played guard and forward in high school and played all five positions at Kentucky throughout his career. He’s one of those rare players who knows the game from every position.’’

And maybe, someday, from the general manager’s position?

“I’ve never really thought about it,” he says, “but I know if I did do something, it would be in the front office. Joe’s been around me long enough to know how I work. You get a feel for a person just by watching him on the basketball court. I do know this – I would not want to coach.”

For Dumars – who’s never wanted to coach, either – that’s probably another confirmation of exceptional basketball IQ. They’ve been on the same wavelength, Joe Dumars and Tayshaun Prince, from the moment the man who rebuilt the Pistons thought his stabilizing force might have gotten his brains scrambled, courtesy of the wild man he enlisted Scott Perry to find.

Well, to be precise, it wasn’t that moment. It was the moment after. The moment Tayshaun Prince came back for more. The moment Joe Dumars found his guy.