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“A sure-fire Hall of Famer!” That’s how legendary Pistons broadcaster George Blaha used to refer to Joe Dumars during his playing days.

George knew then, as all true Piston and Joe Dumars fans came to know over the course of his long, successful playing career that Joe was quite simply one of the best, and most special, shooting guards to ever play the game.

Now it’s official: he’s going into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The announcement came in early April and he will be enshrined in September.

My earliest memories of Joe Dumars’ greatness come from the magical championship season of 1989. As the Pistons dominated the league that year, going 63-19 in the regular season and 15-2 in the playoffs, the “Bad Boys” did not have a shortage of charismatic characters to capture the attention of the media and fans.

There was Zeke, Buddha, Worm, Spider, and the Microwave. Not to mention the baddest of the bad: Lambs and ‘Horn. (For you younger fans who have no idea who those guys are, see the footnote at the end of this story.)***

With all of these-larger-than life characters it would have been easy for Joe to have just stayed in the background. And in a lot of ways he did. But on the playing floor, he was never in the background. When the lights shined the brightest, so did Joe D.

In the ’89 Finals while sweeping the Lakers he had 4 big games, averaging 27.3 pts. In Game 3 with the Pistons leading by 3 pts and only seconds remaining, he made an outstanding play when he blocked David Rivers’ three-pointer to seal the victory. This all led to Joe, the quietest of the Bad Boys, to be named MVP of the Finals.

A year later, the team was back in the Finals against the Trailblazers on their way to another title. The team found itself in a tough situation when it lost Game 2 at The Palace and along with it the home-court advantage. With the series tied at 1-1, and the next 3 games taking place on Portland ’s home floor, an ominous feeling of danger was in the air.

The Pistons hadn’t won in Portland since 1974, some 16 years and 20 games. They would have to win at least one game, just to force the series to shift back to the friendly confines of The Palace for an opportunity to pull out the series.

As Game 3 unfolded, several memorable things happened: Bill Laimbeer mentally undressed Kevin Duckworth, Joe poured in 33 points in an incredible performance, and the Pistons dominated the Blazers, winning 121-106. Also, Joe hit one incredible shot in which he put a real high rainbow that seemed to touch the heavens. The shot-clock was running out and he banked it in off the glass.

At the time that it happened, Joe’s backcourt mate, Isiah Thomas said to himself “Your dad put that one in.” Isiah and coach Chuck Daly were told before the game that Joe’s father, Joe Sr., had passed away earlier that day. Joe and his wife, Debbie, had made a pact that if anything were to happen to his dad (who had been battling poor health for years) on a game day deep in the playoffs, that he was not to be told until after the game was over. It certainly seemed as though someone were watching over Joe in Game 3.

After talking with his mom, Ophelia, on the phone it was decided that Joe would stay with the team and not come home until the funeral a few days later. That is what Joe Sr., a man who had worked long, hard hours all of his life to provide for his family, would have wanted anyway: for his son to finish the job that he set out to do.

For the rest of the team, a new goal was established: to end the series as soon as possible, preferably after the next two games, so that the series would end before the funeral and Joe could go home and would only have to focus on his family.

The next game, Joe once again played incredibly well: scoring 26 points. I sat and watched in awe on TV as he performed at such a high level, despite the tremendous weight he was carrying. It remains to this day, one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen a basketball player do.

The Pistons won again, 112-109. They also of course won Game 5, 92-90 on Vinnie Johnson’s magical shot with 00.7 seconds left on the clock.

The Pistons were champions for the second year in a row. Joe went home to be with his family and mourn the loss of his dad: a man who he was incredibly close to throughout this life.

After the ’90 championship season, the Pistons began to regress as a team. Each of his Bad Boy teammates began to either retire or were sent to other teams. It would be 14 years before the Pistons would win their next title. By 1992, the club was reduced to a team that sometimes made the playoffs and sometimes didn’t. But they never got out of the first round again for over 10 years, well after Joe had retired. A couple of those seasons featured less than 30 total wins.

But Joe never asked to be traded. A man with all his skill and accomplishments up to that point, who was in the prime of his career, could have easily asked out. Instead, he nobly stayed and worked with his teammates to try to bridge the gap until the next era of Piston greatness. It was a 14 marvelous seasons for Joe D:

These accomplishments and rankings further underscore what made Joe so great as a player: his abilities to score, pass, shoot, and defend. Oh wait—that’s virtually all phases of the game of basketball.

And that’s the key defining quality of Joe’s playing career: he could do it all. A shooting guard by trade, there were also innumerable times when he played point guard or found himself on the floor with two other guards at the same time. Isiah Thomas, Vinnie Johnson, and Joe Dumars formed arguably the greatest 3-guard rotation in NBA history.

I could write for hours about all the great facets of Joe’s game. But instead I’ll focus on two: his incredible jump-shot and his defense.

Joe’s shot was quite simply the sweetest jump-shot I have ever seen. George Blaha described many of Joe’s shots as resulting in “sweet string music.” This was a classic Blahaism—one of his best—and he used it to describe many different players’ shots. But it was probably more fitting for Joe than any other.

It was a true rainbow. He got more arc on the shot that virtually anyone. His 3-pt shots were like bombs, going up from a long-distance away, soaring higher and higher, before finally descending and finding its final resting place shredding the net and with it, shredding the opponent’s hopes of winning a particular game.

As lethal as Joe’s jumper was, his one-on-one defense was simply torturous for opponents. He defended the best scoring guards the NBA had to offer throughout his career. He took on Magic Johnson, Reggie Miller, and Michael Jordan.

In their heyday the Pistons always seemed to defend Jordan better than any other team. His scoring outbursts were kept to a more mortal-like total when the Pistons and Joe Dumars were defending him. Jordan himself even once said that Joe gave him more problems than any other defender.

The amazing thing is that for as great a jump-shooter and defender as he was, Joe was then, and still is today, and even better person. It is truly extraordinary and rare when an athlete does something like plays in one city for 14 years, takes 1 year off, then runs the teams as its president for another 6 and counting, and does not have one shred of controversy come up. Not even one time have we heard anything even remotely bad about Joe, his actions, or his character.

I once met Joe at an autograph signing session. His humbleness and down-to-earthness were unmistakable. All the media and everyone else not directly associated with the team have noted the same thing. The NBA’s leadership is so impressed with Joe’s character that they have named the league’s annual sportsmanship award after him.

I will never forget the image of Joe participating in the team’s celebration activities on the night they won the championship in 2004 with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He had the cigar for a long time that night without lighting it. Maybe he did in fact smoke it later, but after observing Joe for all of these years, I wouldn’t be surprised if in fact he never actually lit it up.

So now that we’ve come to the end of this piece celebrating the life and times of Joe Dumars: a true Hall of Famer in every sense of the word, it is time to give out a thank you.

To the Dallas Mavericks: thank you so much for drafting Bill Wennington and Uwe Blab over Joe Dumars with the two picks just prior to the Pistons number 18 selection in 1985. Were it not for that stroke of genius on your part, we would not have been able to enjoy these last 21 years of Pistons basketball quite as much as we did.

*** If you are too young to remember the Bad Boys and didn’t know who those nicknames mentioned above refer to, everyone is identified here. Zeke = Isiah Thomas, Buddha = James Edwards, Worm = Dennis Rodman, Spider = John Salley, Microwave = Vinnie Johnson, Lambs = Bill Laimbeer, and ‘Horn = Rick Mahorn.

It was a truly special period in Piston basketball when they dominated the game’s landscape and in many ways laid the foundation for the current team’s success. Joe Dumars as president has performed like a genius in constructing this current team of Piston greatness. He has built a team that is very similar to the one that he played on: it is dynamic, versatile, explosive, and dominating defensively.

It is also a team that is made up of several players that play in Joe’s own image. The type of skill, tenacity, character, and greatness that Joe played with are evident throughout the 2006 version of the Pistons.