這我就不翻了.... http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/dumars_090501.html Conducted Thursday, April 30, 2009 Joe Dumars Q&A - Part I 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 I of the transcript of their conversation. Keith Langlois: I was watching a game on TNT last week and Doug Collins mentioned that with a likely changing of the guard in the NBA, the Pistons and San Antonio both about to go out in the first round, what an accomplishment it was to get to the conference finals so many years in a row but also the toll it takes to play 100 games every year. As a player, you went to five straight conference finals and beyond. Can you talk about what it was like coming back in ’92 and what it does to the competitive fire of a team? Joe Dumars: Doug Collins and I had a conversation about that very subject in Cleveland before Game 2 at the hotel and I was speaking to him about the physical and emotional toll it takes on you playing deep into the playoffs every year, year after year, five, six, seven years. Physically it takes a toll on your body. Your body breaks down because you’re playing more games than anybody else. Especially if you’re the same team, continuing to go year after year. Other teams, if they get knocked out the first or second round, their bodies get a chance to heal – physically, emotionally they get a chance to heal. That’s what Doug and I were talking about, just the wear and tear physically and mentally of being under that kind of stress non-stop, what feels like year round. KL: That makes for a tough balancing act as a GM, then. Everybody understands the value of playoff experience. Do you seek an ideal mix? Do you try to at least bring in some fresh blood to go with the veterans who have that playoff experience? JD: I think it’s imperative to continue to bring in new blood to that mix. For them to generate that excitement, that enthusiasm, that sense of unknown, when you’ve done it so many times, it becomes rote. It becomes so standard to you. When the stakes are that high, you need some excitement, you need some unknown. That’s what new blood, new talent does for you. They come in and they’re excited and it’s the first time for them and you may have done it so many times. I think in my career I’ve sat in the conference finals for 11 or 12 years, so getting to the conference finals, it may not generate the same juice for me, but for a young kid who’s 24 years old, first time he’s ever been to the conference final, there’s an excitement he’s going to bring that nobody else can match because it’s new for him. KL: Do you think that as you look at the playoff performances of some of your guys over the past few years that they just maybe hit a wall? JD: I think emotionally it’s hard to just get up for every single game. From that standpoint, trying to generate that kind of emotion, you go through so many battles and it takes you through so many different emotions. It’s like wringing out a wet towel. That’s how your emotions feel. You’re just wrung dry and there’s nothing left sometimes. That’s why I wanted to acknowledge it yesterday. In the midst of focusing on the transition, I just ask people to please recognize what happened. That’s all. We don’t have to live it and relive it and live in the past, but just recognize that it’s hard as hell to do what we’ve done over the last six, seven years. KL: We know there’s going to be significant change this summer, but the whole team isn’t going to be gone. We know some of these guys are coming back. You’ve characterized it as you’re looking for impact players. If you acquire one or two impact players, if there’s one or two of the familiar faces back with those impact guys, do you think the way the chemistry will be altered will have an energizing effect on whoever will be left? JD: That’s the optimum way you set it up. That’s the way you want to see it play out, that those new guys come in with such a hunger, such an excitement, such an anticipation that it comes infectious. And that has happened before with other teams. No one can tell me that having Garnett and Ray Allen come in didn’t inspire and motivate Paul Pierce, who had been there for years and been through some tough times. KL: People were talking about him very differently two years ago. JD: Absolutely. You can’t tell me that when Pau Gasol got to the Lakers that Kobe didn’t all of a sudden become more energized. That’s what it’s supposed to do. That’s what you set it up to do. Where it has an incredibly positive effect on the guys that you still have on your team. KL: I think that’s what you hoped would happen with bringing Iverson here – that the chance to win a championship would elevate his game, that having the way he could carry a team would pick up the guys who were here. I think it ’s fair to say you realized there was a risk in bringing him here and the way it turned out met the low end of your expectations. Can you put into words what you thought the high end of your expectations might have been? JD: That his style of play could mesh with us and give us what we had been missing in the previous two or three playoffs – a guy that can just go get it. So often we would get bogged down, as we did this year, have those 69-point games and 78-point games. What I was hoping for is he could come in and fill that gap for us of not having those types of lulls where you end up with 68 points for a game. That was the high end of what I hoped for. But as you and I talked about during that time, we also knew this doesn’t necessarily have to work. This could go the other way and, unfortunately, it went somewhat the other way for us. It didn’t work out. KL: At what point during the season did you say to yourself, you know what, I don’t think we’re going to get this corner turned? JD: Only late in the season, to be honest with you. Probably the second half of the season at some point. We never could get any traction. We never could put any long win streaks together. Like I said yesterday, one step forward, two steps back. That continued on throughout the season. Late in the season, you just hoped for a favorable matchup and that your guys would get ready to lock into a playoff series. Toward the stretch, I was just hoping for a matchup that we’d have a chance to compete in and that our guys would put the season behind them and focus on the playoff series, but it never happened for us. -- "We'll see them bandwagon ass-cats come May and June," - Rasheed Wallace --

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