At the onset of the off-season, Joe Dumars certainly made it sound like the Pistons were ready to start moving and shaking this off-season, perhaps that they were even on the verge of desperation.
It hasn't happened yet, but Dumars doesn't seem bothered.
As stated by the Pistons' president in an interview with Keith Langlois:
I’m not disappointed and I’m not frustrated. I’m never disappointed or frustrated when there’s nothing on the table to pull the trigger on a good deal. When there’s no good deal to be made, you can’t get frustrated and disappointed and force yourself to do something that’s not smart. I’ll reiterate what I said early on after the season was over. That we would be open to doing any deal but I’m not going to give players away and make a bad deal. I understand the way the world works now. I understand the way the media and fans hear and decipher what they want to. So when people ask me what about the big trade, my response is always the same: What big trade is that? What I said was I would go out and try to make a deal if there was one to be made, but don’t look for me to give anybody away.
Fair enough. No arguments here.
There seems to be a lot of doomsday sentiment going around about the Pistons for this coming season, and yes, they certainly proved mortal against our beloved Celtics this spring. But while the starters are beginning to really age, it's hard to imagine this team simply falling off the map as currently constructed.
This is still the same group that won 59 games last year and went to its sixth straight conference finals. Billups, Hamilton, Prince, Wallace and Dice can still play, and the Pistons have two of the league's most promising youngsters in Jason Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey. Dumars strikes me as wholly right not to make moves simply for the sake of making moves. And I'm still wary of the bad boys from Detroit for the coming season.