I received a very nice email from Need4Sheed reader Jasmine Vining, a senior at EMU studying journalism, who attended Joe Dumars speaking engagement at Eastern Michigan University. Jasmine gave me quite a few tidbits of information from Joe’s speech.
The two years the Pistons were in the finals, they were 15-15 or somewhere around there after the first 30 games. He believes that it will take that much time for the guys to build the kind of chemistry they had in previous years and play like the team we are used to seeing.
He would rather be 14-16 and have the bench play than to be 25-5 with the starters playing 48 minutes and then be burnt out when the playoffs come around.
He thinks that Detroit lost conference finals during game 2 vs. Cleveland. When they had a 20+ point lead in the fourth quarter it went down to four. That gave the Cavaliers the feeling that the could beat Detroit and what should have been a five game series ended up being a seven game series. Once they got around to game 1 vs. Miami they were tired and Miami was ready.
He thinks Tayshaun is most like himself. He feels Richard Hamilton is the only player who always gives himself a chance to be great, so even if Rip doesn’t have a good game he doesn’t think it is necessary to talk about his performance after.
He is very proud of Rasheed for all of the work he does off court. He does more than anyone of the players but most of the time he doesn’t allow media to cover it.
He said that the game is less physical than it was two years ago, Detroit was adjusting their style of play to fit in with the league and Ben Wallace didn’t want to or didn’t think he could make that transition so he went to a team where he wouldn’t have to. He explained that he was disappointed but knows in this business and change is inevitable. He has no resentment towards Ben Wallace.
He understands what David Stern is trying to do in terms of cleaning up the league but the process in which he is doing it needs work. On Friday when the Pistons played the Lakers Lamar Odom was ejected, Joe was happy to see him go but didn’t think he deserved the tech he got.
He wasn’t expecting to be picked by Detroit, after the draft he returned to his hotel room and tried to figure where Detroit was on the map.
He has a business degree if he weren’t in basketball he would probably be an attorney, he mentioned that he likes to negotiate the contracts.
I just want to thank Jasmine for taking the time email me the info on my favorite player. If anyone else has a Pistons story to tell, feel free to email me at need4sheed@gmail.com.
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