Card Shark Joe Dumars Has Been Toothless Lately

Joe Dumars needs a new deck of cards. For better luck, if nothing else.

The deck from which Dumars has been dealing cards to himself for the past several years must be crooked or stacked against him. Either that, or he’s just simply a bad dealer.

Dumars, the Pistons’ president and GM, drew Blackjack in 2004, when his team upset the vaunted Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. A year later, his card total was 22, as his Pistons lost to the San Antonio Spurs in seven hellish games.

Since then it’s been a lot of bad hands.

But Dumars can blame no one but himself. He’s been a one-man act at the table, functioning as both dealer and player. Joe D has played no hand that he hasn’t dealt to himself.

Tonight, when the clock strikes 12:01 a.m., the NBA free agency period begins. Dumars is about to play another self-dealt hand.

Armed with a boatload of cash—thanks largely to expiring contracts coming off his books due to pre-meditated moves—Dumars will go shopping. He has, roughly, some $20 million of salary cap space with which to work. He fully expects to sign two impact players, adding to a roster that is in dire need of a makeover.

Problem is, Dumars’ card sharking has left a lot to be desired since the 2005 Finals.

It used to be that we looked the other way, politely, when Joe drafted, because his other personnel moves were so successful. Free agency and trades were his thing. The draft was something that he did because it came around every summer. Joe would make his pick and then we’d watch him either sit on the bench, be traded, or both.

There were a couple of nuts for the blind squirrel: Tayshaun Prince in 2002 and Rodney Stuckey in 2007 come to mind.

I needn’t run through the rest of them, because it’s all been told before.

So we excused Dumars’ misses at the draft, and there were plenty of them, because he was able to fortify the roster in other ways.

Now he can’t even do that anymore.