Who is Joe Dumars? New interim GM of Kings has wealth of experience

Joe Davidson, Jason Anderson
·2 min read

Now calling the front-office shots for the Sacramento Kings: Joe Dumars.

After Vlade Divac stepped down as the Kings general manager on Friday, Dumars, already part of the front office, was named interim executive vice president of basketball operations, also in charge of GM duties.

Dumars in a suit and tie is one thing. But who and what is Dumars all about?

If you soaked in the NBA action a generation ago, you might remember Dumars as the cool, calm, defensive-minded unifying force on the powerhouse Detroit Pistons team often full of chaos (think Dennis Rodman).

Dumars was a shooting guard for the back-to-back NBA champion Pistons in 1989 and ’90, earning NBA Finals MVP honors in ’90.

A 6-foot-3 combo guard from Louisiana, Dumars was a first-round pick by the Pistons in 1985 out of McNeese State. He played through the 1999 season, earning six NBA All-Star bids, four All-Defensive First Team honors and the 1994 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship award while posting career averages of 16.1 points and 4.5 assists. His jersey No. 4 was retired by the franchise in 2000 and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.

Dumars was the first recipient of the NBA Sportsmanship Award, which is now called the Joe Dumars Trophy.

As a front-office man, Dumars was paramount in putting together the Pistons team that won the 2004 NBA championship.

Dumars joined the Kings in June 2019 as Special Advisor to the General Manager. He joined Kings primary owner Vivek Ranadive in Orlando during the NBA’s restart. Sacramento has missed the playoffs 14 consecutive seasons, the second longest such run of futility in NBA history to the Clippers.

As Detroit’s president of basketball operations, starting in 2000-01, Dumars built a team that that reached the Eastern Conference Finals six successive seasons, through 2008. He was the first African American executive to lead an NBA team to a championship.

Dumars grew up in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the son of a custodian and a truck driver. His favorite sport growing up was football but he turned to basketball after his father, Big Joe put up a hoop to perfect his craft. The hoop was a rusty bicycle wheel bolted onto a wooden door, placed in the back yard, and then he was hooked.