NBA Hall of Famer Joe Dumars Goes from Louisiana Kid to Detroit Superstar

Joe Dumars should have played football. Sound funny? Well, coming from a southern family with five older football-star brothers, the path was laid for young Joe to excel with the odd-shaped brown ball, not the round orange one. “When you grow up in the deep South, you have God, family and football,” says Joe. But he did not want to be just another household football player. So he gave basketball a shot. And whether it was caused by his brothers labeling his new passion a soft sport, or having to defend himself against critics who did not understand what made the kid from a small school a justified first-round NBA draft pick, Joe took on a self-fueled fire, carrying him from high school, to college, to a 14-year Hall of Fame career as a professional basketball champion.

Joe just wanted to be different. “Being the youngest of seven children, you want to cut your own path, create your own niche,” he explains. “I finally realized, no matter what I did in football, my brothers had already done it. So I just started playing basketball to create my own identity.”

His own identity, sure, but basketball was also something that Joe just happened to be good at. Turned out, more than just good. He built a dedication that permeated his entire life. “I’m in class, got good grades, went on dates, did everything,” says Joe. “But always lurking in the back of my mind was the next time on the court or in practice.”

And so he practiced.  Using a hoop built by his father literally out of the spokeless rim of an old bicycle tire, Joe describes untold hours trying to get better. He recalls “shooting until I couldn’t lift my arm anymore, and then switching to do the same thing left-handed. But when something is a passion, you never dread doing it.”

Early on, it was only this desire to improve that kept him going; playing in the NBA wasn’t an immediate goal, but as the Joe Dumars buzz started to grow, so did his sights. 

“In high school I was only thinking: I could get a scholarship for this,” Joe says, referring to the game. In a world without ESPN and the Internet, there were none of the national-player rankings that today begin comparing recruits before they start high school. He couldn’t know how he compared nationally and never even considered it a possibility. “You just played and strived to be the best of where you were.” As he began college, his base for comparison began to grow. “It feels good to be one of the best freshmen,” he thought, “then one of the best sophomores.”

In his junior year at McNeese State, reality hit Joe like an unexpected bounce pass; someone told him that he was a prospect in the NBA draft. In his words, he was “surprised. It was the first time I started realizing that I could do this.”

The hard work got Joe drafted by the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, in a city he knew little about. The life of a Piston rookie took him a long way from rural Louisiana. In his new home, Joe found new motivation.  “Coming into rookie camp from a small school, you look around the room, and think ‘nobody is questioning whether those big-school guys belong here or not, just whether I belong here or not.’ So I had this inherent chip. There’s almost a resentment of ‘How dare you question me because of the school I went to?’”

The critics may or may not have been wondering if Joe Dumars was the real deal, but you couldn’t tell that to him. He took everything personally and made it his mission to succeed. This was most notable in his defense, which by no coincidence was the facet of his game for which he received the most praise. “I felt a sense of embarrassment if my guy scored on me,” he recalls. “I thought it was just the worst thing in the world. “It has to burn when a guy scores on you-that’s the mentality necessary for a truly great defender. Physically you need a certain set of skills, but mentally you have to take it personally.”

Joe may have had doubters, and there may have been critics, but in the end, he was his own best and worst opponent. As the championships and accolades came, he just kept trying to be the best he was, where he was. “Even when you’re a 10-year veteran, you feel like you have to prove it every day.”

Note the second part of this series, in which Joe will share his jump and the significant wisdom accrued.