The Detroit Pistons and Jalen Duren finally ended their exhausting contract saga by agreeing to a five-year, $200 million extension on Thursday. The odds of Duren playing the next five seasons with the Pistons are nowhere near as high as many fans seem to expect.
Credit Detroit for holding firm on their best and final offer. The offer Duren ultimately accepted had been on the table for some period of time. Duren and his camp tried to exert pressure on the Pistons by threatening to take the one-year, $9 million qualifying offer if they did not up their offer. That was never a realistic path forward for Duren to take and the Pistons correctly called his bluff.
The back and forth nature of the negotations made for interesting offseason theater, but now attentions must turn to the quality of the deal for both sides. Duren successfully secured life changing money. There's a chance he turns into a max-level player in the near future, but his struggles in the playoffs seem to auger that won't happen. The $200 million deal is on the high side of where he's likely to end up as a player.
That makes the deal a big risk for a Pistons team that is desperate to build a title contender around Cade Cunningham. The pick-and-roll partership between Cunningham and Duren was a massive part of Detroit's offensive identity last year. Even so, questions remain over whether or not that's an efficient enough path forward for a team trying to win it all.
Jalen Duren's long term future probably doesn't lie with the Pistons
The biggest issue with Duren's massive extension is that it locks the team into a big three of Cunningham, Duren, and Ausar Thompson. The latter also got a sizeable extension this summer that will pay him $155 million over the next five years.
None of these three players are obviously overpaid in a vacuum. The questionable aspect of this pla going forward for the Pistons is that they don't fit together. Specifically, Duren and Thompson are both below-average shooters for their respective positions. It's hard to see how they can coexist in a half-court offense that takes advantage of Cunningham's skills to form an uber-efficient unit.
That's a massive concern for Detroit when they enter high-leverage playoff situations. Opposing defensive schemes will focus on getting the ball out of Cunningham's hands. The team's lack of a secondary creator or high-level shooting across their crunch time lineup will prevent the Pistons from winning it all.
The odds strongly favor Detroit looking to move either Thompson or Duren before their extensions expire. Thompson is the less expensive of the pair which increases his chances of fitting into the team's salary structure. That leaves Duren as the player who will need to go for the Pistons to pivot.
What will the Pistons do with Jalen Duren?
The silver lining of this contract saga for the Pistons is that several teams displayed strong interest of paying Duren as a max player. That gives the team's front office a nice working list of teams they could engage in trade talks once they conclude Duren can't take them to the promised land.
$40 million per season is a big salary for a center who isn't truly elite, but it's important to remember that Duren is just 22-years-old. It's easy for a front office to talk themselves into the idea that he has significant career growth ahead of him. A rebuilding team with a lot of salary cap room might conclude Duren is the highest upside player available to them on the trade market.
The challenge for the Pistons is that they'll need to demand a return that includes a player or players who can help them win now. Cunningham is squarely in his prime and Detroit cannot afford to waste that. In other words, flipping Duren for draft picks is not a viable path forward for the Pistons.
Look for Duren to stay in Detroit for a least one more season before another disappointing playoff exit makes it clear the team can't move forward with the trio of Cunningham, Duren and Thompson. An offseason trade to a team in rebuild move that might include a third team to help get the Pistons what they need is the obvious future for Duren. The Pistons have got him paid but they aren't going to keep him for the life of his new deal.
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