Jalen Duren cost himself some money in the playoffs. He is still going to be very, very rich.
The Detroit Pistons are expected to lock up Duren on a five-year contract this summer, per Hunter Patterson of The Athletic. The anticipated price range is $200 million to $220 million, which works out to roughly $40 million to $44 million per year. That is real money. It is also less than what Duren could have made if his postseason had gone differently.
Duren made an All-NBA team this past season, which made him eligible for a five-year supermax extension worth $287.1 million. He averaged 19.5 points, 10.5 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks during the regular season and was the most important reason Detroit secured the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference at 60-22. He looked like a top-five center in the league for six months.
Then the playoffs happened. Duren disappeared. His averages fell to 10.2 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks. He had multiple games where he was either in foul trouble or just got pushed around physically by Evan Mobley and the Cavaliers. Detroit lost in the second round and Duren took the bulk of the blame in postgame analysis around the league.
That postseason performance is why the contract number is now $200 million instead of $287 million. About a $67 million haircut for a poor playoff run. Hard lesson, especially for a 22-year-old.
The flip side is that this is actually a smart outcome for Detroit. Pistons president Trajan Langdon talked publicly about Duren’s future earlier this offseason and made it sound like a deal was inevitable. The question was always price. Five years at $200 million is a very reasonable number for a young, athletic All-NBA center who still has room to grow. The Pistons are now committed to a player at a salary that does not totally hamstring their cap flexibility for the next half-decade.
The risk is that Duren never figures out how to translate his regular-season dominance into the postseason. That is a real concern. Centers who get bullied in the playoffs do not magically grow new skills overnight, and the modern NBA punishes bigs who cannot defend in space or hit a face-up jumper. Duren is one of those bigs right now.
His age is the saving grace. He is 22. Most centers in this contract bracket are 28 or 29 by the time they sign their first major deal. Duren has another five or six years of physical development ahead of him, and he is already a finisher around the rim, an elite rebounder, and a real shot-blocker.
What Detroit needs from Duren next year is simple. Show that the playoff version of him was the outlier, not the rule. Add a face-up jumper. Stop fouling out of games. Be the anchor of a defense that finally takes a step toward title contention.
Duren is a restricted free agent, so the Pistons control his rights either way. But the report from Patterson suggests both sides want this done at the projected range without a max offer sheet dragging it out. Expect a press conference at some point in July with Duren wearing a Pistons hat and saying all the right things about wanting to be a Detroit lifer.
Forty million dollars a year is enough money to buy a lot of jump shot lessons. He is going to need them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
