Tom Gores is a hit with Palace crowd, and ‘excited about inspiring the town’
Gregg Krupa, Detroit News staff writer
With 2:50 left in the second quarter at The Palace of Auburn Hills, they introduced Tom Gores as the man who has agreed to buy the Detroit Pistons.
Standing with a throng of well-wishers in a suite 16 rows above the court, the unshaven Gores wore a sand-colored blazer with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket and a white shirt and blue jeans. He took one giant step toward the camera, which showed his image on the scoreboard high above the court, and thrust his right fist skyward.
"Yeah!" Gores roared, smiling.
The fans in The Palace liked that. They cheered as loudly as they had since the struggling home team took the court. Later, in the fourth quarter, he would dance, almost John Travolta-like, for the camera.
It was as high as Gores' profile got on this night. There will be time for all of that later. On Monday, in what is likely to become his Palace, the man who is the repository of the dreams of Pistons fans was purposefully deferential. After all, it is not his team, quite yet.
But, when it is, he made clear, he will not walk alone.
"It's congratulations to us, not to me," Gores said, as about a dozen reporters greeted him for a 61/2-minute news conference before the game with the Cavaliers. "This is a community asset. This is not an asset we are going to handle alone. We have to do this together.
"This is us.
"I'm excited to be back in Michigan. And I'm happy that everybody's kind of welcoming me back," he said. "I grew up in sports. But mostly, I'm excited about inspiring the town."
They asked, what kind of owner will he be?
"I'll be whatever owner this team needs and this franchise needs," said Gores, who lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., but also maintains a residence on Grosse Ile. "So when they need me back in Michigan, I'll be back.
"I'll be impactful, that's for sure. I want us to be successful. I didn't show up here not to be successful.
"Whatever it takes."
What it will take, presently, is for the agreement between Gores and Pistons owner Karen Davidson to be approved by the NBA Board of Governors. That process begins formally on Thursday. League approval is deemed probable, but closer to June 30, after the deal is formally closed, with financing approved, and licenses and permits moved into Gores' name.
But Gores made clear that his methods in building a $2 billion fortune and one of the fastest-growing private-equity companies in the country, Platinum Equity, will rule the day around The Palace when he takes control.
Gores and his staff had a considerably higher profile behind the scenes. A number of them met and greeted members of the Pistons and Palace staff, and employees buzzed with word that their prospective new boss and his team already were active.
"We're going to learn, first," Gores told reporters. "We're not in decision-making mode. Are we afraid of change? Absolutely not, no problem and sometimes you need change. But, we're going to learn right now.
"There's a great, deep organization here that existed before us, and we need to make the most of that. This is not a culture you throw away. This is an unbelievable city, it's an unbelievable organization, and we see a real opportunity.
"I grew up here. But I want to be part of the comeback," he said. "We've had a hard time in Detroit, in Michigan."
As for team president Joe Dumars, Gores said, "Joe is an amazing part of the Pistons organization, and we would have to talk more and make sure we're all on the same page. But he clearly is part of this legacy."
Gores said he's uncertain whether he will spin off the entertainment pieces of Palace Sports & Entertainment, including the DTE Energy Theater and leases at Meadowbrook.
"We're not sure," he said. "But we want to shake up Detroit, and music clearly is part of Detroit. I mean, this is Motown.
"We have to get back to our core competencies in Michigan. It's engineering. It's manufacturing. It's Motown. And we have to get everybody excited about that," he said. "So, we love owning that asset and that was a very important part of the deal.
"But we'll see," he said. "We'll do the right thing."
Tom Gores made sure to show his deference to the highly-successful ownership of the late Bill Davidson.
"Karen, I think, handled the situation beautifully," he said. "Bill clearly built this house, and I have to build on it. I haven't done anything, yet. Bill did a lot. He built this stadium, he built the team, he built the championships and we have to go to work.
"All we want to do now is go to work and help the team, the Pistons organization, the community.
"All we've done is make a deal to buy the team," he said. "We have to do more, and that's what we're here for."
In the fourth quarter, with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" blaring over the sound system -- with the line, "Born and raised in south Detroit!" -- Gores clapped, danced and urged the fans to join him, as his image was projected above.
The blazer was long gone, and he was in shirtsleeves, dancing as eagerly as if he were in a contest.
And when the Pistons' Charlie Villanueva and the Cavaliers' Ryan Hollins got into a tussle on the court in the fourth quarter, and the teams had to be separated, Gores was animated up in the box.
They liked that, too, at The Palace. And they hope to like a lot more in the years ahead.
About 30 minutes after the game, Gores remained in his box,talking with fans and signing autographs. There was a continuous line of about 50 people waiting to greet him.
Photo caption: New Pistons owner Tom Gores gives the thumbs up while entertaining friends in his suite at The Palace before the game with the Cavaliers. (Clarence Tabb Jr./The Detroit News)
