Pelicans' Dumars noncommittal about Williamson and Green but pledges new and rigid standards

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — Joe Dumars grinned when Zion Williamson's name came up during the 61-year-old Hall-of-Famer's formal introduction as the New Orleans Pelicans' executive vice president of basketball operations.

“At the league office, I’ve had to talk to Zion a few times," said Dumars, who spent the past three seasons as the NBA's executive vice president and head of basketball operations — a job that included oversight of player conduct.

“I won’t go into those conversations,” added Dumars. "But we talked since then, and I’ve talked to Zion since I became the EVP here, and we had exceptional conversations on the phone.”

That's the extent of what Dumars chose to say about Williamson on Tuesday, a week after his hiring. The topic is sure to come up again this offseason, as Dumars goes about determining the path forward for a franchise coming off its worst record (21-61) in two decades.

Williamson, drafted first overall out of Duke in 2019, is still just 24. He has averaged 24.7 points in 214 games, showing the potential to be a transformational star. But injuries have sidelined him for 258 regular-season games, as well as every postseason contest New Orleans has played since he was drafted.

Then there have been some unsavory off-the-court episodes with romantic partners splashed all over social media, some of which very well could have been the topic of Dumars' past talks with Williamson. And Williamson was suspended one game this season for being late for a team flight.

In his general comments at team headquarters, Dumars indicated that his tolerance for players who are unreliable on the court and irresponsible off of it will be low.

“You have to set standards — and you can’t waver from those standards," Dumars said.

Standards that change over time are not conducive to elite basketball, Dumars said, adding, "That’s not elite anything when you allow things to just slide.”

Just two players attended Dumars' introduction: guards CJ McCollum and Jose Alvarado. Also in attendance was coach Willie Green, who has one year left on his contract, and whose future with the club remains in limbo.

Dumars was largely complimentary about Green, a native of Detroit, where Dumars won two NBA titles as a player with the Pistons before winning a third as general manager.

“I’ve been knowing Willie forever — great man,” Dumars said.

Dumars is taking over for David Griffin, who was fired last week after a six-year stint that began with the drafting of Williamson.

What Dumars intends to change remains unclear. He was noncommittal about his plans, saying he wanted to spend more time meeting everyone and spend a lot of time listening.

“Griff did some nice stuff,” Dumars said. “You got some nice pieces here. It’s a hard job.”

This past season, the Pelicans were done in largely by extended injury absences involving not just Williamson, but all of their starters. That's another area in which Dumars aims to “find out what’s happening," adding that he doesn't want to "come in with any preconceived notions.”

The Pelicans announced Dumars' hiring just two days after firing Griffin. The club never discussed other candidates or a search process for Griffin's successor.

Gayle Benson, who owns both the Pelicans and the NFL's New Orleans Saints, described a relationship with Dumars that grew considerably while he worked at NBA headquarters. Something she liked most about him, she said, was that he will “always give you straight, truthful and honest feedback, even when it’s not what you want to hear.”

She also touted Dumars' Louisiana roots; he grew up in Natchitoches, played in college for McNeese State and is an unabashed Saints fan.

“As a proud native of Louisiana, he knows how important our teams are to our community," Benson said. "He and I have spoken about this.”

She added that Dumars “has my full support to make any decision he deems necessary.”

Dumars, who has made Michigan his primary family home, said he was happy working for the NBA in New York and wasn't looking to leave until Benson reached out to him.

“Sometimes opportunities come along and, you know, right place, right time, right people,” Dumars said.

One of the first steps toward success, Dumars said, is to “fill your building with like-minded people."

“We want people that are going to embrace New Orleans," Dumars said. "They’re going to embrace being in this city, in this state.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Joe Dumars, the New Orleans Pelicans new executive vice president of basketball operations, speaks at his introductory press conference in Metairie, La., Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Joe Dumars, the New Orleans Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations, wipes his eyes before speaking at his introductory press conference in Metairie, La., Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Dumars sits next to Pelicans governor Gayle Benson, who also owns the NFL New Orleans Saints. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Joe Dumars, the New Orleans Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations, left, poses with Pelicans governor Gayle Benson, who also owns NFL New Orleans Saints, after his introductory press conference in Metairie, La., Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Joe Dumars, the New Orleans Pelicans new executive vice president of basketball operations, speaks at his introductory press conference in Metairie, La., Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Joe Dumars, the New Orleans Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations, is hugged by Gayle Beson, the governor of the Pelicans and owner of the NFL New Orleans Saints, after he spoke at his introductory press conference in Metairie, La., Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Joe Dumars, right, the New Orleans Pelicans new executive vice president of basketball operations, greets head coach Willie Green, center, next to Jordan Dumars, left, Joe Dumars' son, after his introductory NBA basetball press conference in Metairie, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

NEW YORK (AP) — The R&B singer Cassie returns to the witness stand Wednesday after a day spent recounting grotesque and humiliating details of life with her ex-boyfriend, Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Prosecutors allege Combs used his fame and fortune to orchestrate an empire of exploitation, coercing women into abusive sex parties. His lawyers argue that, although he could be violent, he never veered into sex trafficking and racketeering. They contend all sexual acts were consensual.

Here's the latest:

Combs is in a creme-colored knit sweater over a button down white shirt with gray pants. He occasionally dons thick, black-rimmed glasses when exhibits are shown.

He stood and hunched over a laptop with two of his lawyers as his other lawyers conferred with prosecutors and the judge at the bench about logistics for the playing of “freak off” videos.

And she said it could ruin everything she’d worked for and “make me look like a slut.”

She said she always worried he’d get mad enough to release them.

“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” she said.

She said he claimed police were about to arrest him. And when she refused to accept his phone calls, Combs told her that if she didn’t pick up the phone, she’d “never hear my voice again,” Cassie said.

Jurors were then shown pictures of Cassie and Combs at a movie premier soon after the March 2016 hotel attack. Cassie described bruises on her body that were visible in the photographs and said she was unable to cover up all the damage with makeup. She wore dark sunglasses to cover her black eye.

She said she took the selfies on her Uber ride away from the Los Angeles hotel. She said she wore sunglasses because she had a black eye.

Once home, she said a friend of hers saw her injuries and was “super upset” because she’d “seen me with black eyes and busted lips before.”

Cassie said her friend called police, but she declined to reveal who had injured her once police arrived so they left.

“In that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way,” she testified. “I wasn’t ready.”

“I just remember it coming towards me. I remember it hitting a wall,” she said.

Earlier in the trial, a hotel security guard said he saw the damage when he arrived upstairs and told Combs he would have to pay for it. Cassie said she left the hotel in an Uber and went to her apartment, which was nearby.

Testimony resumed shortly before 10 a.m. on Wednesday at Combs’ sex trafficking trial with Cassie answering questions posed by prosecutor Emily Johnson for a second day.

Cassie was in a relationship with Combs for a decade. Johnson picked up where she left off Tuesday, asking Cassie about video images of Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.

During her testimony Tuesday, Cassie said eventually she was doing “freak offs” weekly. They went on for a decade, with the final one in 2017 or 2018, she said. Each time, she said, she had to recuperate from lack of sleep, alcohol, drugs and “having sex with a stranger for days.”

She described the situation as: “‘Freak offs’ became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.”

During her opening statement, prosecutor Emily Johnson told the jury Cassie was not the only woman Combs beat and sexually exploited.

Combs was among the most influential hip-hop producers and executives of the past three decades, working with artists including Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige and Usher. He also created the fashion clothing line Sean John and produced the reality show “Making the Band.”

Prosecutor Emily Johnson, who delivered an opening statement Monday, has softened her tone considerably in questioning the government’s star witness, Cassie, about the 10 years she spent with Combs.

While she repeatedly referred to Combs as “the defendant” in her opening, Johnson often calls him “Sean” as she delicately questions Cassie, who’s in the third trimester of pregnancy with her third child.

Cassie said her first “freak off” occurred in Combs’ Los Angeles home with a male stripper from Las Vegas. She told jurors she felt dirty and confused afterward, but also relieved that Combs was happy.

Still, she said she felt obligated to go along with future “freak offs.”

“I just didn’t want to make him upset,” she said. “I just didn’t want to make him angry and regret telling me about this experience that was so personal.”

Cassie began crying when asked if she liked any aspect of the “freak offs.” She said she enjoyed “time spent with him.”

She said she used drugs at every “freak off” to numb herself during “emotionless sex with a stranger that I didn’t really want to have sex with.”

The Associated Press doesn’t generally identify people who say they are victims of sexual abuse unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has done.

In her 2023 civil lawsuit, Cassie alleges Combs trapped her in a “cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking” for more than a decade, including raping her and forcing her to engage in sex acts with male sex workers. Combs settled the lawsuit the next day.

In May 2024, CNN aired video that showed Combs attacking Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016. The video closely mirrored an assault described in her lawsuit, which said Combs had already punched her that night, and she was trying to leave the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles when he woke and came after her. In the footage, a man who appears to be Diddy, wearing only a towel, punches Cassie, kicks her, and throws her on to the floor. The lawsuit alleges Combs paid $50,000 to bury the video at the time.

Among other things, Cassie alleges Combs raped her when she tried to leave him and often punched, kicked and beat her, causing injuries including bruises, burst lips, black eyes and bleeding.

Prosecutor Emily Johnson says she’ll be questioning Cassie about her 10-year relationship with Combs for about half the day today before defense lawyers begin their cross examination.

She finished Tuesday by questioning Cassie as prosecutors once again displayed recorded footage of Combs’ attack on Cassie at a bank of elevators in a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. He kicked her and dragged her and later apologized after CNN first aired video of the attack last year.

Cassie told jurors she was “sexually inexperienced” when she met Combs and that he introduced her to various sex acts before asking her to engage in her first “freak off” when she was barely 22. Cassie said she was “confused, nervous, but also loved him very much” and “wanted to make him happy.”

Cassie, now 38, said her relationship with Combs ran the gamut from good times to arguments and physical altercations. She said the abuse happened “too frequently” and sometimes came after the smallest perceived slights.

Cassie said Combs ordered her to recruit male sex workers for “freak offs” and that he would pay them thousands of dollars to have sex with her. The encounters, fueled by ecstasy and other drugs, would go on for 36 or 48 hours, and she said the longest lasted four days. They took place in private, often in dark hotel rooms, unlike Combs’ very public White Parties in the Hamptons that attracted A-list celebrities.

▶ Read more about Cassie’s first day of testimony

A jury of 12 New Yorkers, plus a half-dozen alternates, is hearing testimony at the trial.

The group tilts male and middle-aged or older. Only three jurors are under 40. Five are over 60. Classical music listeners outnumber people who identified as hip-hop fans.

Their identities are known to the judge and lawyers but won’t be made public. The jurors revealed a little about themselves as they were selected for the trial.

Here’s what we know about the regular jurors:

Eight men

Four women

▶ Read more about the jury

Cassie sued Combs in 2023 alleging years of rape and abuse. The suit was settled within hours, but was followed by dozens of similar legal claims and touched off a criminal investigation.

A singer, actor, dancer and model, Cassie’s professional ambitions began in adolescence, when she signed to the top-tier talent and modeling agency Wilhelmina. Her music career launched shortly thereafter, when she left her home state of Connecticut for New York, where she signed with manager Tony Mottola and first met Combs.

Cassie met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37. He signed her to his Bad Boy Records label and, within a few years, they started dating.

▶ Read more about Cassie

Cassie returns to the witness stand Wednesday after a day spent recounting grotesque and humiliating details of life with her ex-boyfriend.

During her first day of testimony, Cassie described being pressured into degrading sexual encounters with paid sex workers. She also recounted being beaten numerous times by Combs when she did things that displeased him — like smiling at him the wrong way.

“You make the wrong face and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face,” she said.

Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, accused Combs of gaining her submission by threatening to publicly release videos of her with male sex workers.

Combs’ attorneys have acknowledged Combs could be violent but maintain that the sexual acts were consensual. They say nothing he did amounted to sex trafficking or racketeering — the charges that he faces.

Lawyers for Combs have yet to cross-examine Cassie, a type of questioning that will give them an opportunity to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her accounts of what happened.

▶ Read more about Cassie’s testimony

Sean Diddy'Combs, far left, and attorney Marc Agnifilo, right, sit at the defense table during witness testimony in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

Cassie Ventura wipes tears from her eye while testifying in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)