Joe Dumars wasn’t the only one with a voice that matters who left The Palace the night of the Pistons’ elimination by Boston saying, “I’d seen enough.” So had his owner.
“Absolutely,” Pistons owner William Davidson told me Wednesday morning. “No question in my mind. And I encouraged Joe to sever the relationship with Flip Saunders.”
Davidson rarely grants interviews, but I was there to get his reaction to his admission into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The announcement was made in April and the induction ceremony will take place in Springfield, Mass., the weekend of Sept. 5-6.
Like many Pistons fans, Davidson is excited about the prospect of summer change as laid out by Dumars and thinks Michael Curry is the ideal choice to take the Pistons in a new direction.
“I love Michael Curry,” he said. “Michael worked for us. He comes in at 6 in the morning. The nice thing is when he was a player here, he established a home. He’s kept that home, so his identification with the area and the team is 100 percent. I have great, great confidence that Michael is going to do a tremendous job.”
Davidson bought the Pistons in 1974 from Fred Zollner, the man who established the franchise in Fort Wayne, Ind., and moved them to Detroit in 1957, and said he has a greater satisfaction with his experience today than he did in the early days because of all that’s been accomplished – winning three titles, elevating the Pistons to the NBA elite, building The Palace and seeing it recognized as the arena that changed the economics of the NBA forever and, finally, having it all come together with his Hall of Fame induction.
“I would say I get a much, much greater satisfaction today because we have the whole history of the progression of the franchise and all those things we’ve done,” he said. “I’m particularly proud of The Palace and the fact it’s now the second-oldest arena and will become the oldest if the Nets move to Brooklyn and is still the premier building in the league.
“I’m very proud of (late business partner and Palace investor) Bob Sosnick, who did a lot of the design of the building and very, very proud of all of our people who have kept it clean. and then (Palace president and CEO) Tom Wilson, who has made important additions to the building with all our new underground suites, our concourses. The building is a much different building than it was when it was first constructed.”
Davidson said the realization of Hall induction fully dawned on him the night of April 8 when the Pistons honored their All-Time Team, bringing back the top 30 players in franchise history to commemorate the 50th year since Zollner moved the team from Fort Wayne.
“When I got the reactions, I was even more pleased that I did get elected,” he said. “It was just announced a day or two before, so all those players who I had close associations with all said how pleased they were and we had a few hugs. The timing of the announcement was very, very propitious for me.”
Davidson said that, much like the three NBA championships the Pistons have won on his watch, gaining election to the Hall of Fame is an organizational honor for “everybody who has participated with me and made notable the achievements we’ve made. We’ve done a remarkable job. And I haven’t seen very many of the NBA franchises that have come up to our standards.”
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Award-winning journalist Keith Langlois, most recently lead sports columnist at The Oakland Press, joined Pistons.com as the web site editor on October 2, 2006. Langlois, who brings over 27 years of professional sports journalism experience to Palace Sports & Entertainment, serves as Pistons.com's official beat writer and covers the team on a daily basis.