Detroit Pistons: Does Joe Dumars having cap room this summer make fans hopeful or horrified?

Image credit to wakpaper.com.

The Detroit Pistons haven’t been to the playoffs since 2009, when they were swept in the first round by the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Pistons haven’t finished above .500 since 2007-08, when they made the last of their six consecutive trips to the Eastern Conference Finals.

And the Pistons won’t be joining the postseason party this season. At 24-47, the Pistons are still alive, but it is only mathematically. With 11 games to play, Detroit trails the eighth-place Milwaukee Bucks by 11.5 games. The only reason the math still works in the Pistons’ favor is that the Bucks still have 14 games to play.

So basically, Detroit’s playoffs hopes require the cities of Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Toronto and Washington to be wiped off the math—not likely.

What is more likely is that the Pistons will finish with fewer than 31 wins for the fourth straight season. Since 2008-09, Detroit is 145-238 and has gone through three coaches—Michael Curry (39-43 in his one season in 2008-09), John Kuester (57-107 and one mutiny in his two years at the helm) and Lawrence Frank (49-88 in his second season).

But general manager Joe Dumars should have somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million in space under the salary cap this summer. That should be a great thing, right? With a solid young core of big men Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond and young guard Brandon Knight, the right moves could propel the Pistons right back into the Eastern Conference’s elite.

However, there may not be a general manager in recent NBA history whose record is more pockmarked with peaks and valleys than Dumars.

He deserves full credit for a number of the deals that he made to put together the core of the team that makes those six straight trips to the conference finals from 2003-08, reached the NBA Finals in 2004 and 2005 and took down the mighty Los Angeles Lakers to win the franchise’s third championship in 2004.

Dumars has been on the job since 2000 and it’s worth looking at how that title team was assembled.

–Dumars picked up Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins as part of a sign-and-trade with the Orlando Magic in exchange for Grant Hill on Aug. 3, 2000. Hill spent most of his time in the Magic Kingdom in street clothes, while Wallace was twice named Defensive Player of the Year in Auburn Hills.

—Corliss Williamson, a key reserve on the title team, came to the Pistons along with Tyrone Corbin, Kornel David and a future first-round pick that later was swapped to Orlando and became the most-written about player never to wear an NBA uniform, Fran Vazquez.

–Drafted a project named Mehmet Okur with the 38th overall pick in the 2001 draft. Okur later became a key player on the title team in 2004 before departing via free agency.

–Took a flyer on a skinny kid out of Kentucky named Tayshaun Prince with the 23rd overall pick in 2002. Prince became a starter during the 2002 playoffs and was a key performer on the title team as well.

–Signed Chauncey Billups as a free agent in July 2003.

–Traded Jerry Stackhouse to the Washington Wizards for Richard Hamilton on Sept. 11, 2002.

–Traded Atkins and a 2004 first-round pick (Tony Allen) to the Boston Celtics and Zeljko Zebraca, Bob Sura and another 2004 first-rounder (Josh Smith) to the Atlanta Hawks as part of a three-team trade that landed Rasheed Wallace on Feb. 19, 2004. The Pistons also got Mike James in that deal.

So give Dumars his props, even if those 2004 future first-round picks turned out to be better than serviceable players, because he:

–Picked Monroe No. 7 overall in 2010.

–Took Knight with the eighth overall selection in 2011.

–Grabbed Drummond with the No. 9 overall pick in 2012.

But there is the proverbial other side of the coin with Dumars; this is, after all, the same general manager who:

–Drafted undersized and under-quick guard Mateen Cleaves with the 14th overall pick in 2000.

–Drafted Rodney White, an inconsistent performer in his one year at Charlotte, with the No. 9 overall selection in 2001.

–Drafted Rodney Stuckey with the 15th overall pick and Arron Afflalo with the 27th overall pick in 2007, then kept the wrong guy in a trade we will get to in a moment.

–Took Austin Daye No. 15 overall in 2009, passing on point guards Jrue Holiday (17th overall), Ty Lawson (18th overall) and Jeff Teague (19th overall). For a team that has had absolutely dismal point-guard play from the moment Billups left town to the day Jose Calderon showed up in a trade with Toronto in January, that draft pick has loomed as a franchise-killer.

But that doesn’t even mention the mother of all bad draft choices, the draft pick that now looks like one of those “pick the one that doesn’t fit” questions on a standardized test.

To wit:

Name the item that doesn’t belong in this list:

a. LeBron James.

b. Darko Milicic.

c. Carmelo Anthony.

d. Chris Bosh.

e. Dwyane Wade.

And there, ladies and gentlemen are, in order, the top five selections in the historic 2003 NBA Draft—four future Hall of Famers and a player whose name in Croatian translates to “gigantic bust.”

And it was Dumars who swung and missed on Milicic with the No. 2 overall pick. Some diehard Pistons fans defend this pick by saying that Prince made it unnecessary to draft Anthony and that the Wallaces would have made it difficult to fit Bosh into the mix and that Wade was an unproven commodity coming out of Marquette.

OK, sure. Revisionist history, after all, can be lots of fun.

Then there was the trade: In November 2008, Dumars turned Billups, valuable reserve Antonio McDyess and Cheikh Samb into a famously unhappy Allen Iverson from the Denver Nuggets. That trade worked out so well for Detroit that Billups helped lead the Nuggets to the Western Conference Finals while Iverson was sent home before the start of the playoffs. Ouch, babe.

So, yes, Dumars record has been all over the place.

But with cap space available this summer, many Pistons fans can’t help but remember the summer that put the franchise where it finds itself today—mired near the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

With all sorts of cap space available in the summer of 2009, Dumars dropped $90 million on Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon.

As great as Hamilton was for the Pistons and as good as it appears Drummond can become, you couldn’t blame Detroit fans for never, ever wanting to see another former UConn player in the red-and-blue again, because Villanueva and Gordon were just about as bad as two high-priced free-agent acquisitions could be.

Gordon’s already gone, traded last summer to the Charlotte Bobcats along with a protected future first-round pick for gunner-without-a-clue Corey Maggette, who got off the bench 18 times before falling out of Frank’s rotation entirely.

On the other hand, Gordon tried to lead an insurrection in Charlotte against coach Mike Dunlap, so maybe having a useless Maggette is better than a dissident Gordon.

So even as the Detroit Pistons play out the string of another lost season, their fans have to be wondering … which general manager shows up this summer? Will it be Extraordinary Joe or will it be Dim Dumars?

The franchise’s next several seasons are riding on that answer.