Fans of the Detroit Pistons couldn’t be happier with how this season went, as the team finally made the leap from doormat to competitive.
That goodwill won’t last long, as the Pistons will enter next season with something they haven’t had to face in a long time: Expectations.
Fans will expect more from individual players and the team, which is the nature of being good. This also applies to the front office, as this will be their first real offseason and they’ll be expected to find missing pieces to a championship roster.
One of the biggest decisions they’ll have to make is on Jalen Duren, who is eligible for an extension this summer.
This is not an easy call, as Duren showed signs at times and did improve on defense, but was it enough to justify a big extension? Was it enough to declare him your center of the future?
I’m not so sure.
The Pistons have options with Jalen Duren
I do think the Pistons will make an offer to Duren, but whether it’s one he will accept is anyone’s guess.
Duren was very good at times this season and he is just 21 years old, but it’s fair to ask if they could find a guy who does what he does for much cheaper than the extension he and his agent will want.
As of right now, Duren is largely a lob threat who is decent around the rim defensively but is far from a defensive anchor. He’s still terrible defending the pick-and-roll and had to be switched off Karl-Anthony Towns in the playoffs, which is not a great sign.
Lob threats who are good rebounders don’t generally command upwards of $20 million a season, which is likely what Duren is going to want. There were times that Paul Reed was more effective in the playoffs than Duren and he made just over $3 million last season.
One-dimensional centers who aren’t great defenders and don’t stretch the floor are not that hard to come by, so the Pistons would have to believe there is more to Duren than we have seen so far and there may be, as he is still so young.
The big gamble, restricted free agency or trade
It would be a considerable gamble to give Duren a big extension now, as the new CBA is punitive when you sign the wrong guy.
The Pistons could just make an offer they are completely comfortable with (somewhere around Isaiah Stewart’s contract) and put the ball in Duren’s court.
If he declines their offer, the Pistons could just let him play out the season and become a restricted free agent. This would give them another year of data and another year for Duren to prove he can make big improvements on defense.
There is then risk that you lose him for nothing, but Detroit would still have some amount of control as they’d have the ability to match any offer. If Duren blows up next season and you have to pay him in restricted free agency, great, but if he doesn’t, you might have lost one of your most valuable trade chips and turned a positive into a sunk cost.
The last option would be to trade him, and I am sure we’ll have more on this as the offseason progresses. The Pistons could almost certainly get a first-round pick and maybe even a player from a team like the Lakers, who were ready to hand over Dalton Knecht and a first-round pick for Mark Williams.
This could all get messy for Detroit, especially if they are far apart from Duren’s camp on a number for an extension. The Pistons don’t want to insult their young center, but they can’t go too deep to retain a one-dimensional big, as it’s just not a good allocation of resources.
There is going to be some drama in Detroit.