It only took the 2 months for the Joe Dumars hire to backfire on the Pelicans

I know Joe Dumars, from the outside anyway, fairly well. I am a Pistons fan. We’ve been through stuff. And I know the New Orleans Pelicans pretty well. I used to write about them exclusively, and I have a bunch of friends who are Pelicans fans. I feel fairly tapped in. I don’t know anything about basketball, but I write about it and that tricks people into thinking I do. So on two of three counts, I feel qualified to write about this.

Since the day Dumars was announced as the Pelicans’ next president, just about any news that has involved him seems to be received with an immediate “oh no!” and then a grimacing hope that “maybe it won’t be that bad.” That was true with the hiring itself, that was true of bringing in Troy Weaver, and it seemed people tried so, so hard to make that the case with the Pelicans’ draft night moves. However, I don’t think as many people made it out of the “oh no” state of mind this time. I know very few people who seemed to be happy with Dumars at this point.

And now look:

Yes, there’s no guarantee Masai Ujiri would have been willing to come to New Orleans (or that the Bensons would pay what he would likely demand), but Joe Dumars has only been around for a little over two months. It’s hard to dismiss that nagging feeling that if the Pels had just waited a little bit longer to make a hire, they could have brought in someone popularly considered a top-level executive instead of, you know, Joe.

That feels mean, but it also feels accurate.

Thinking about Joe Dumars makes me sad sometimes

I heard stories about Dumars on the Pistons’ Bad Boys teams. I played as him in NBA Jam: Tournament Edition. He made the trade for Rasheed Wallace that pushed the 2004 team to the championship, and followed that up with a half-decade-long run of relevance near the top of the East.

Joe did that stuff. These are important things to me. I will always, always have a fondness and appreciation for Dumars. The good things he did don’t just go away.

But the good things, over time, just started to get outnumbered. He drafted Darko. And he signed Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon. After moving on from Flip Saunders, I think we had a rotating set of jack o lanterns as head coaches. And if I’m recalling correctly, the Pistons were never a big fan of getting smaller assets or accumulating value around the edges. Just a lot of moves that came across as “I bet I know better than anyone else.”

And unfortunately, that’s the impression I get from the move to trade that future first round pick to move up a bit and get Derik Queen. It doesn’t seem like one of the good Pistons things. It seems like one of the bad Pistons things.

There’s only one way to find out, though. Maybe everything will work out great and thinking about Dumars can make people happy again. Or maybe Masai will take a year or two away to find himself, Dumars will take an interest in woodcrafting in 2027 then leave his job, and Masai will jump in and take over!

Actually, neither of those things seem likely.