http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/dumars_090505.html Joe Dumars Q&A - Part III by Keith Langlois Pistons president Joe Dumars sat down Thursday afternoon with Pistons.com editor Keith Langlois to discuss the season past and the off-season ahead. Here’s Part III of the transcript of their conversation. Keith Langlois: Back to the current roster. How do you assess the seasons that Jason Maxiell and Amir Johnson had? In some respects, they too, like Stuckey – and victim is too strong a word – but they were also affected by the lineup shuffling. How do you assess their seasons? Joe Dumars: Both Maxiell and Amir maintained where they were from the previous year, but what you really want from young guys is see them get better each year. They maintained who we know they’ve been, but to grow as a team, I’ve always said you’ve got to get better internally. You can’t just go out and get it from the outside all the time. You have to improve and grow and get better internally as well as get guys from the outside. That’s going to be a focus going forward. We felt like Kwame Brown got better from when the season started to when the season ended, he became effective for us. Will got better. Stuckey had ups and downs but he showed flashes of getting better. You’ve got to have that. It’s imperative you have young guys continue to get better as you add pieces to the puzzle. KL: Speaking of Kwame – he has a player option for next season – have you had any discussions with him or his agent about his plans for next year? JD: We expect to have him back. We liked his size, we liked his presence, his defense and his rebounding, just his physical nature. It’s tough to find big guys like that and we were happy with him as the season unfolded. He made some significant strides from when the season started to when the season ended. KL: One area where you were deficient this year was 3-point shooting. The 3-point shot has evolved over the last 20 years. The year you won your first championship, you guys took less than five threes a game as a team. You took 29 for the year. Now Rashard Lewis takes seven a game. It’s become a huge weapon. JD: First and foremost, I’m a fan of the 3-point shot. I like the 3-point shot. I like 3-point shooters. They affect the momentum of the game. They allow you to get back in games when you’re down. I just think it’s a huge weapon. I’m going to try to address that this summer. I’m going to try to bring some guys in that can knock down threes. That’s a weapon. I love the 3-point shot. I’m biased, but I love the 3-point shot. That’s definitely a weapon we need to get better at. Definitely. KL: There were various media reports this year about player disgruntlement. I know you’ve always had your finger on the pulse with these guys. There’s always some of that over the course of the season with 82 games and all the personalities involved. But was there anything this year that rose to a serious level of concern with you? JD: Every year I’ve been here. Every single year, you deal with stuff. There ’s not a year that goes by that you don’t deal with issues with players and coaches. Championship year, I could tell you some stories of issues that went on in the middle of the season and late in the season, little mini-blowups here and there. It’s a part of this business. It’s a fact of life. I grant you, if you talk to all 29 other teams, they’ll tell you. This year was no different than any other year, dealing with things. The only thing different this year was the record and how the season unfolded in terms of wins and losses. In terms of issues that you deal with, I don’t care who you are. You can talk to any team, they have issues. KL: But a team that’s conditioned to success and all of a sudden you struggle, does that fuel a little greater degree of issues? JD: Well, it certainly doesn’t help when you’re not winning. It does not help. You can get by and get through issues a lot easier when you’re on a 10-game win streak and everybody is feeling great as opposed to losing four out of five. That’s human nature. But nothing we couldn’t get through. You walk in here every day and you expect to deal with whatever comes. I never walk in here and think I won’t have issues to deal with. You show me a GM or somebody running an organization who tells you that and what you have is a fantasy league. He’s running it from a computer is what he’s doing. KL: We’re two months from the eve of the start of free agency. As you sit here, do you have in your mind a fantasy starting five for next year or are you still in the information-gathering mode and waiting to see what other teams are willing to do? JD: I don’t have a fantasy starting five, but – because I haven’t gotten that far – but let’s just say there are some guys I would definitely like to see in a Pistons uniform next year. It’s going to take some work to make it happen, but that’s why I’m in here right now. To try to see this thing unfold and try to add the pieces we need to add to get back into contention. KL: But reasonably confident, given what you know about the marketplace and given what you know about the power of having $20 million in cap space, that you can affect some pretty significant change? JD: The cap space, the draft picks and the assets we have on our roster puts you in a position where you can affect change with your team. That is the whole foundation of this ’08-09 season – it really is. It’s a strong foundation to have the space and the picks and the assets to get better and that’s the only way you can get better. As I said yesterday, I’m pretty sure we could still be rolling in the second round right now if nothing was touched. But I’m sitting here wondering, at the same time, if that happens, what are we going to do in the future? Because when this runs out, there’s nothing left. And I didn’t want to be faced with that prospect. I just didn’ t. So you take the hit this year, then try to regroup and add the pieces that you need to add and get back up and get rolling again. -- "I play in 82 Allstar games, because I play with 5 allstars every game" -Chauncey Billups --

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