Detroit Pistons’ training camp starts at the end of the month, but the team still has unfinished business to complete in the offseason.
By now, everyone is well aware of the Jalen Duren standoff that has leaked into September, but his negotiations are also holding up other business, namely an extension for Ausar Thompson.
I suggested just getting Ausar’s deal done now to try and push things along with Duren, but the Pistons have stayed patient and are sticking to the plan of getting Duren’s deal finished first.
The numbers haven’t changed, with the Pistons offering somewhere in the mid 30’s and Duren demanding an annual salary of over $40 million.
Duren has until media day before this gets really ugly, and if that happens, the Pistons are facing drama they would rather avoid.
Pistons’ training camp has a chance to be...awkward
Ausar Thompson is under contract for next season already, and the Pistons have until the first day of the regular season to sign him to an extension, so the good news is that they have time to get Thompson’s deal done even if this Duren nonsense lingers on.
But if Duren is still unsigned when training camp rolls around, things have a chance to be awkward, as Duren won’t even be there, and Thompson will be without an extension he probably thought he’d have in hand by now.
Even if it doesn’t cause tension between teammates, the absence of the presumed starting center is going to have an effect on training camp one way or another.
The Pistons don’t want to start training camp with two of their core players annoyed because they don’t have contracts.
Things would be far worse if Duren took the qualifying offer, as then you’d have a starting center entering the season thinking about his next deal and having to watch his teammate get the early lucrative extension that he didn’t get.
That doesn’t mean the Pistons have to cave here, but there is some risk of destroying all of that team chemistry everyone talked about last year.
At this point, everyone involved knows what the numbers are likely to be, so it would be better for everyone involved to get this done as soon as possible, get back to business and start with a fresh perspective in training camp.
The longer this goes on, the higher the chances that media day and training camp turn into an unfocused circus, which the Pistons can’t have given that they are trying to integrate several new players.
I wasn’t expecting Detroit to be the most dramatic team of the offseason, but they are now facing contract issues with two of their key players with less than a month before training camp starts, so it hasn’t been smooth sailing in Motown.
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