We are four days away from Detroit Pistons training camp, and Jalen Duren is still not under contract, which was not part of the offseason plan, if there was one.
The Pistons have raised their offer to Duren by at least $20 million over the course of the offseason, but most of that has come recently as time started to become a factor.
I get that negotiations take time, and the Pistons had other business to attend to as they tried to get the Duren deal finished, but given how it has turned out, it seems they wasted a whole lot of their offseason doing nothing.
These tough talks that are happening with mere days before training camp should have been happening at the beginning of the offseason, when the Pistons had a more powerful position.
There is no way this should be coming down to the wire, especially now that we know Detroit was willing to raise their offer and that they had other options that have since disappeared.
Why didn’t the Pistons just pay Jalen Duren if they were going to anyway?
Now that we know the Pistons are willing to pay Duren at least $200 million, the question needs to be asked: Why didn’t they just offer him that to begin with?
Detroit was trying to win the PR and cap sheet war by trimming a few million off their original offer, an offer which didn’t apparently go over well with Duren.
If they knew they were willing to go that high, and that Duren’s camp was going to demand it, they should have just offered the $200 million or close to it at the beginning of the offseason.
If they had, Duren might be long signed, hanging out with his teammates and ready to report to camp a happy player. Instead, they tried to get cute, Duren called their bluff and now the Pistons have run out of time and leverage.
Maybe Duren really does want to leave, and this isn’t all about money, but now it’s going to cost them more to keep an unhappy player when they could have just avoided the mess altogether.
Why didn’t the Pistons trade Duren early on?
Once it became clear that Duren’s demands were higher than the Pistons were comfortable going, they should have traded him immediately back when there were multiple teams that would have been interested.
Instead, they counted on Duren caving, which he didn’t, and are now left with few (if any) sign and trade options that Detroit could stomach.
They let Duren stew on it, which made him angrier and just solidified his position.
The Pistons wasted a lot of time that should have been spent working out this deal or finding a trade, but they waited until the last minute, as there was reporting at one point that the two sides hadn’t spoken for over three weeks.
The Pistons wish they had those three weeks back now, as they are down to just days to get this done and may end up having to pay more.
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