Dumars Gets News of Father’s Death : NBA finals: After scoring 33 points, Piston guard leaves by private plane to pick up his wife in Detroit, then continue to his hometown in Louisiana.

A limousine waited outside. His clothes had already been gathered by a locker room attendant. The team owner’s private plane was ready at the airport.

All that remained was for someone to tell Joe Dumars his father had died.

Dumars and his wife had prearranged a plan for just this moment. If the Detroit Pistons had a game that day, he would be told afterward.

They knew to make such preparations because Joe Dumars Jr., a retired truck driver in Natchitoches, La., had been sick for some time, forced into the intensive care unit two weeks ago by failing health. That this was Game 3 of the NBA finals shouldn’t change anything.

So Joe Dumars III scored 33 points Sunday afternoon at Portland Memorial Coliseum to lead a 121-106 victory, and only then was he told.

His wife Debbie, who had called team officials earlier in the day to inform them, was called back just after the game. The Pistons took a moment to celebrate the win, and Coach Chuck Daly grabbed Dumars and took him to an office just outside the locker room.

Debbie, still on the phone, broke the news to Joe. Without changing out of his uniform, he went to the waiting limo and on to the airport. Owner Bill Davidson’s plane was scheduled to go to Detroit to pick up Debbie, and then on to Louisiana. They followed the plan.

Dumars’ father died at 2 p.m. EDT, about 90 minutes before tipoff. Daly and assistant coach Brendan Malone were told. So was Isiah Thomas, the captain.

More than once they were tinged with the pain that loomed in the midst of a moment that was otherwise filled with grand accomplishment, Detroit having won here for the first time in 16 years.

“You were looking at a guy who was real happy,” Thomas said. “But you knew all of the sudden in the next hour his world was going to be shattered.”

Daly had trouble sitting through the game knowing about that next hour.

“I was inclined to want to talk to him a little bit,” Daly said, “but his wife said that’s not what they wanted to do.”

Malone had trouble watching.

“I would just look at him and feel sad,” he said. “I would say to myself, ‘Here’s a guy having his best playoff game of the year. At the end, that euphoria is going to be--what’s the word?--blown out the door.’ ”

When Dumars walked out a door into the rain and the waiting car, no one knew when he would return. For Game 4 Tuesday? Game 5 Thursday? Then again, that wasn’t really the issue.

“I’m pretty sure right now the game is not the most important thing on his mind,” Thomas said. “If he doesn’t come back at all this season, we sure as hell understand.”

Everyone who knew Dumars realized how close he was to his father, the man who sawed an old door in half, hammered a bicycle rim in the center and attached the finished product to a post in the back yard of their Natchitoches home so his sons could play basketball.

When the youngest of Joe and Ophelia’s seven children was part of the team that won the 1989 title, the championship ring went home to dad.

“His hero was his father,” Malone said.

“He always had that face of concentration,” Malone said of Joe Dumars III. “But I also think he knew something today. He knew his father was in intensive care and that death was imminent. You could tell it was on his mind.”

Not by his playing. Having averaged only 14.3 points the last three outings, including seven in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Chicago, Dumars started Sunday with eight points in the first quarter.

He was at 12 by halftime, and only getting warm. He went for 13 more in the third quarter. He still had 12 minutes left.