A New beginning that starts with a leg up

The last documented words of Rasheed Wallace’s season – and, perhaps, of his Pistons career – were these: “That’s the end, man.”

That’s all Wallace had to say after Detroit’s Game 6 loss to Boston in the Eastern Conference finals ended the Pistons’ season at exactly the same point it ended in each of the two previous two.

But Wallace was probably something less than prophetic. Because what Joe Dumars told the media Tuesday afternoon – after firing Flip Saunders a few hours earlier – about everyone being in play for trade is what he’d been telling his veteran core all along.

“They understood that before the season started,” Dumars said. “It’s not like this is the first time I’m saying that to those guys. I’ve said that before the season started last year and I reminded them during the season – get it done. Get it done. It’s old hat for those guys. They understand.”

The beginning of the end – for Saunders and for this iteration of the Pistons, the team built around Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace, the holdovers from the 2004 NBA championship team – came in the first 150 seconds or so of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals when they fell behind Boston 11-0 after playing magnificently to win a road Game 2.

“The most disappointing game for me in the whole series … you get Game 2 and you come home and lose Game 3 like that, you’re not urgent. You can spin it any way you want. You can tell me they shot great. I’m not going to sugar coat it and it something it’s not. So I said, ‘OK, that’s enough. I’ve seen enough of this.’ ”

So as nightmarish as the final 10 minutes of Game 6 were for Dumars to witness, when the Pistons let a 10-point lead at home go with little resistance and lost going away, it wasn’t a shock to his system.

“The last 10 minutes of Game 6 really was a microcosm of the last three years for me. We’re good enough, we’re right there, we didn’t get it done. That last 10 minutes played out, I looked at it, I said, this is the last three years right here. … And as I walked out of The Palace that night, I had a real sense of calm. OK, I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen enough.”

Dumars told me before the playoffs that Boston, for all its regular-season success, would find things out about itself that it couldn’t know once the Celtics got deep into the playoffs. Paul Pierce, miffed that the Celtics are considered underdogs to the Lakers in the NBA Finals, admitted as much on Monday when he said it took the Celtics a while to figure themselves out as a playoff team during seven-game struggles with Atlanta and Cleveland in the first two rounds, but over the course of their series with the Pistons it came together for them.

My guess is Dumars will cringe when he reads that. If the Pistons had carried the fight to Boston like they should have, the Celtics never would have had the time to get it figured out. The Pistons got what they wanted out of the first two games in Boston, a split, accomplished with that Game 2 performance replete with all the poise and big-game flourish that came to earmark the Pistons early in this era. If they’d hit Boston with some heavy body blows to start Game 3, we’ll never know how the Celtics might have responded – or not responded.

So he’d seen enough. Enough to become convinced that Flip Saunders, for all his X and O acumen and offensive vision, didn’t have the aura common to men of leadership. Dumars went out of his way to be gracious to Saunders, but answering plain questions about his team’s failures in plain terms leads to the inevitable conclusion of an indictment of the coach as well as the players he’s put on high trade alert.

“I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page and that wasn’t always the case, I felt, this year," he said. "It was scattered too much, at times. It really doesn’t matter how strong you are in this seat that I sit in. That one voice has to make sure we keep everything and everybody on that same page.”

So what next? Saunders’ successor will be on board soon, within a week, Dumars guessed. The draft follows that, though with the 29th pick, don’t expect much immediate help. The Pistons would be thrilled if they could get someone who could give them as much next year as Arron Afflalo, drafted 27th, gave them this year, or someone with the type of long-range potential as a Jason Maxiell, taken with the 26th pick three years ago. Free agency follows, but Dumars characterized it as “not one of the stronger classes.”

So to make the type of significant change Dumars strongly said was his preference, it’s going to take a trade. That could mean two starters for one really good player. It could mean a veteran in his prime for a younger player of less certain status but a high ceiling. It could mean trading a shorter-term contract for a longer-term deal with a trade partner more interested in cap relief than getting pure talent for talent.

There are a lot of possibilities out there and Dumars is intent on exploring as many of them as possible. Don’t expect a trade this week or next. It’s unlikely to happen before the June 26 draft and might not take place until the first wave of free agency washes ashore and teams get a chance to survey the landscape.

But part of the reason Dumars was so publicly blunt about his intentions was to stir the pot. When Dumars held his postseason media address last season, it came more than a week after the Pistons had been eliminated, and media speculation in the meantime had him intent on breaking up the team. That had his phone ringing off the hook with crazy trade proposals from teams looking to pick his bones.

This year, with only a few days since the season ended, those calls haven’t started – and Dumars had always been adamant in talks with his NBA peers that he wasn’t touching his core.

“The reason I haven’t gotten all those calls about players yet is for the last five years or so I’ve said everybody is not in play. So after we leave here today, with the Internet and all your sites and people reading it, they’ll know. They’re in play.”

In play, perhaps, but not at fire-sale prices. Dumars made clear there would be no tearing down before a complete rebuilding. He’s not interested in enduring lottery seasons on the wild hope of hitting it right in the year that a once-every-generation superstar comes along. He’s got coveted veteran assets to put in play but also a second wave of young players – Rodney Stuckey, Amir Johnson, Afflalo, Maxiell, Cheikh Samb – ready for progressively greater roles.


So Rasheed Wallace was right, or half-right, at least. It’s the end, indeed, but it’s also a new beginning – and one that starts with the Pistons well ahead of most of the pack.

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At least Mr Dumars realizes the sufferings that flip did last 3 years when he took over detroit, now we are a hell of a team, as long as we get a great coach. we need to bring back our 2004 glory by ofcourse hiring better coaches.

what about avery johnson, larry brown, paul silas, Chuck Daly, Isiah Thomas.

who is a better coach for the pistons next year??