Tom Gores was officially introduced as the new owner of the Detroit Pistons this afternoon, and in case you missed the press conference, the Detroit News has posted a live stream, which you can watch above. The whole thing is worth watching if you're a Pistons fan, with one highlight coming at the 20-minute mark when he's asked who he will lean on for basketball knowledge.
"We're getting educated, we haven't bought a basketball team before," Gores answered. "We have a guy who's been in the league for a very long time by the name of Joe Dumars. And we're going to lean on him, pretty heavy. Joe, he knows basketball.
"And we're going to push Joe. I mean he knows that, we already told him that 'we're going to challenge you every single way, whether it's right or wrong, we're going to push you and we're going to push you hard.' Because our job isn't to agree with Joe. Our job is to challenge Joe, and hopefully that will make the outcome better.
"We have a great deep organization. Last night in greeting the Palace, I realized, wow, the depth of knowledge going throughout the Palace -- whether it's the media folks, the PR folks, Joe's folks, Alan's* folks -- there's a great deep knowledge. We have to bring that out. So the fact is we don't need a lot of outside people. We might use a few. We don't need a lot of outside people, we have it right here -- we just have to tap it."
* [That'd be Alan Ostfield, president and CEO of Palace Sports & Entertainment and the Detroit Pistons]
When asked to clarify if that meant Joe Dumars was his guy and would remain the vice president and general manager, Gores answered: "Yes, of course. Joe and I are getting to know each other. We agree on core values, and, you know, we'll see, we're going to have to fight it out, we have to fight it out. But Joe's ready and I'm ready."
Overall, I think Pistons fans have good reason to be excited -- Gores emphasized accountability and acting quick to correct mistakes, something that this franchise has sorely missed the past couple of seasons.