After all that, cooler heads have prevailed, and the Pistons and Jalen Duren have agreed to a five-year, $200 million contract extension. The deal got done just hours before the deadline for Duren to sign the qualifying offer, which would have made him an unrestricted free agent after the season, all but signaling the end of his tenure in Detroit.
Losing the 22-year-old All-NBA center for nothing would have been a disastrous outcome for the up-and-coming Pistons. Still, this resolution shouldn’t exactly have rival Eastern Conference competitors like the Celtics sweating either.
For one thing, this is still a lot of money to pay for a center who is good but may never be great. Duren isn’t a floor-spacer or an elite rim protector. He’s still young and has room to grow, but we saw his weaknesses on full display in the playoffs, as he wasn’t able to make much of an impact in the biggest games of the season when defenses were actually scheming for him.
Pistons backed into a corner with Duren overpay
With this contract, Detroit is going to need him to step up and become a reliable number two option next to Cade Cunningham. Going forward, the Pistons will now have more than 75% of the salary cap tied up in Cunningham, Duren, and Ausar Thompson. That’s a good young trio, but is it going to be good enough to win a title?
That’s a fair question to ask, and they’ve certainly left room to make moves around the margins and build up this squad in the coming years, but they’ve now tied themselves to a nucleus that doesn’t exactly have the Celtics shaking in their boots. Boston is paying far less for a center rotation of Neemias Queta, Mitchell Robinson, and Luka Garza, which may not be that much worse than Duren.
It’s a risky move for the Pistons, but one that they probably had to make. They obviously didn’t love this deal, as it took all offseason to get there, and they made it under duress when backed into a corner. That’s not usually how you want to build a team, and this has the potential to blow up in a way that gets extremely ugly in Detroit and makes it very hard to build a true contender around their MVP candidate, Cunningham.
Duren would have been prime free agent target for Clippers
Another reason that this move could be good news for the Celtics is that it keeps a possible marquee free agent away from the Clippers next summer. Boston is now heavily invested in the failings of LA, as they possess a lucrative pick swap with them for the 2028 draft. After all the penalties that have been levied against the Clippers, it feels like their only path to the playoffs in 2028 is overpaying for free agents.
Duren was shaping up to be a prime candidate for them to splurge on, but now that’s off the table, leaving even fewer options for LA to improve in a market that was already shaping up to be fairly desolate.
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