He Deserve To Be Right Were He's At

Antonio Mcdyess, one of the known sixth man for his team, had been worried lately about wheather or not he would be traded to another team. After talking it over with Joe Dumars, both decided that they wanted Antonio to stay with the Detroit Pistons.

Here is part of an Article by Keith Langlois
Title: Staying Put
By: Keith Langlois


AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – Antonio McDyess could barely bend over to tie his shoes a week ago, but his back is feeling much better these days. Part of the credit goes to Pistons strength coach Arnie Kander for his deep-muscle massage, but most of it goes to Joe Dumars for his surgical skills. Joe D, it turns out, excised a 1,000-pound gorilla from his sixth man’s back.
But before Dumars put McDyess’ mind at ease, he made him squirm a little.

After practice early last week, he sent trainer Mike Abdenour to summon McDyess – who says he would have seriously considered retirement had the Pistons traded him – to his office.

“When you send somebody to get guys, automatically they think they’ve been traded,” Dumars grinned as he recalled the story. “I don’t care who it is, they think they’re gone. In football, they say, ‘Bring your playbook.’ It’s like that.

“He cracks the door open and says, ‘Yeah?’

“You need to come in here and sit down.”

“Come on, Joe, what?” McDyess said, dropping his head. “What are you about to say?”

“I’m about to say, ‘Sit down.’

“I don’t want to sit down – just tell me.”

“No, you’ve got to sit down first,”

McDyess plops down in the seat across from Dumars’ desk.

“OK, I’ve got a deal for you.”

“Awwwwww …”

“Listen to the deal first, McDyess. I’m going to give you something and then you’ve got to give me something.”

“What?”

“I’m going to give you the reassurance that I’m not going to trade you.”

“OK. What do I need to give you?”

“Some … good … basketball … play. Quit struggling.”

“If you don’t trade me, I’ll quit struggling.”

And with that, they laughed, they hugged, they shook hands.

And the Pistons got back one of the NBA’s all-time good guys and best sixth men.

“So he’s been relieved, as you can see,” Dumars said. “That’s why you call guys in. You can’t let it fester.”

When Dumars became fairly certain that Webber would wind up in Detroit, a week or so before he actually signed, he began exploring trade possibilities. His original thought was to deal McDyess, because “even though he was struggling until (recently), around the league he has tremendous value.”

He quickly found a trade partner who made an attractive offer that would have given the Pistons another scoring option on the perimeter. But then Dumars, as he always does, checked the pulse of his locker room. And when he ran it by his captains – Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton – it didn’t take long for them to convince the Pistons’ president to seek another alternative.
“I talked to Chauncey, Rip and Tay and I say to them, ‘Look, if we get Webber, I’ve got to move a big. I can’t keep all of them.’

“And the first thing Chauncey said was, ‘I know you’re not going to move McDyess, are you?’

“I said, ‘Well, I could.’ And Tay says, ‘Joe, you can’t do that. Chemistry, locker room. I know he’s not playing the way you want him to play right now, but he will. He’s going to get there. We’ve got to have him.’ ”

And so they do – the Antonio McDyess of the last two seasons who almost never failed to move the Pistons to a higher plane when he entered the game. That process might have begun even before the Dumars conversation. It probably started with a Dumars e-mail sent to McDyess after a listless performance in the Pistons’ loss at Altanta on Jan. 12.

“That told me something, that I wasn’t getting it done,” McDyess said. “I pulled films and looked at myself and how I was playing and I really wasn’t getting the job done. That was eye-opening for me, definitely. You don’t realize it until you do look at yourself play. I know I wasn’t playing that way last year. I was a totally different player and realized I had to go out there and play a lot better.”

McDyess admits that even as he began to lose confidence in himself, it meant the world to him that his teammates never did – and it overwhelms him that the captains went to bat to convince Dumars not to trade him.

“They never lost confidence in me,” he said. “I probably did in myself, but they never did. I was surprised. They were still giving me the ball, telling me to shoot. A lot of times I would hesitate, worry about if I would make or miss the shot. Now I just go out there and shoot it and don’t worry about what happens.

“When you’re in a slump, you lose confidence. You don’t think about anything positive. The thing that lifts you up is your teammates, like Chauncey. He kept saying, ‘That ain’t you. It’ll come; it’ll come.’ Then, when I start playing better, you can hear them all cheering for you. I come into the locker room, they’re like, ‘Glad to have you back.’ And I say, ‘I’m glad to be back.’ It means a lot, knowing your teammates still have that confidence in you.”

When McDyess’ agent first broached the possibility of being traded, it sucked the air out of his lungs.

“I love it here,” McDyess said. “I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I told my agent, if I had to get traded, I don’t know if I would have made it to that team. I would probably go and retire. That’s how close I feel to this team and how dedicated I feel, because of the last couple of years, so close, going to the Finals and trying to win it. I have so many expectations, knowing we can win. If I had gotten traded, I don’t think I could have dealt with it. I would have had some hard thinking to do.”

Now all he has to do is hold up his end of the best deal Joe Dumars could have made for him. (Keith Langlois).