http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/truebluepistons.htmlCan’t close the book on trade until summer: The best general managers in sports – doesn’t matter the sport – are ones who detach themselves emotionally and live by the axiom that it’s better to move an aging star player one year too early than one year too late. Joe Dumars didn’t use anything like those words when I sat down with him Thursday for a three-part interview we’re posting in both text and audio versions on Pistons.com – Part I is up now and parts II and III will go up before the Pistons get back to basketball following the All-Star break – but that’s the drift of what he was saying when I asked him a question about his willingness to make another trade this season on the heels of having made the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson deal in November. I don’t expect the Pistons to make another significant trade, for the record, though Joe D didn’t tip his hand one way or the other on that except to say, “without calling out any names,” he would be reluctant to make a deal for a “difference-maker” who might only be with the Pistons for a year. That would make a deal for Amare Stoudemire, who can opt out of his contract after the 2009-10 season, a reach. But he said the fact he made the huge Billups-Iverson deal really has no effect on his willingness to make another – except for how it might affect his ability to maneuver in the off-season.
And here’s what I found intriguing. It wasn’t that he was saying Billups was pushing the age envelope – to be sure, he’s a year younger than Iverson – but that the Pistons had pretty much used up the life expectancy of their core as it was constituted: “I would say that what’s not lost on me,” Dumars said, “is feeling like what we’ve done in previous years – how we did it, the personnel we did it with – had run its course. We could squeeze out 50 wins and try to get back deep in the playoffs – or you could start the transition process now.” So trading one from among that core now, while he still had All-Star games fresh on his resume, brings the greatest possible return. In today’s NBA, you have to assess a trade from a more encompassing perspective than merely the personnel involved. It’s also about the contractual implications. So the Pistons didn’t trade Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson. They traded Chauncey Billups (and Cheikh Samb and, temporarily, Antonio McDyess) for Allen Iverson AND whatever player they’re going to get next summer with the cap space that the trade creates. So that transition process Dumars talked about, as he went on to say, is really two-fold: Yes, it’s about accelerating the process of making Rodney Stuckey the point guard and leader of the team going forward, but it was also about creating tremendous cap space – more than any team in the NBA other than Oklahoma City at season’s end – that will open up possibilities that really haven’t been much discussed. What has been discussed is free agency, but Dumars’ options won’t be limited to free agency. Cap space means the Pistons could make a trade for a very good player without having to give up equal value in return. Remember last summer, when the Denver Nuggets essentially gave away Marcus Camby, one of the league’s best defensive and rebounding big men, for economic reasons?
So Pistons fans are right to be disappointed that the trade hasn’t yielded a better record at the All-Star break than 27-24. Joe D is disappointed about that, too. But the book isn’t closed on this year’s team until we see what it can muster in the playoffs – and the book doesn’t close on the trade until we see how Joe D converts the cap bounty coming his way. Given the way the economy has soured since last summer, there figure to be many teams looking to make salary dumps similar to the Camby deal after July 1. The Pistons will be positioned to take advantage of their misfortune, should Dumars find something he likes in that vein. Teams with cap space also find themselves used by trade partners who need help making a match work. A third team with cap space can facilitate the trade – and keep a little juice for themselves.So for Dumars to give that up now by trading one of his big expiring contracts, it would have to bring back not just a great player, but a great player who he knew would be part of his core for the foreseeable future. And that’s not very likely. But you won’t have long to wait to see the unveiling of the pieces to the puzzle we can’t yet see that will complete the big trade of last November that started the Pistons on their transition. About five months from now, the Pistons could look significantly different than they do today.
