ESPN’s Tim MacMahon reported 10 days ago that the Pistons’ offer to restricted free agent Jalen Duren was a five-year deal in the range of $35MM annually, which would work out to a total of $175MM. However, according to Sam Amick and Hunter Patterson of The Athletic, Detroit has actually gone higher than that, putting an offer on the table for the big man that would be worth in the neighborhood of $190MM over five years.
It’s unclear whether that $190MM would be fully guaranteed. Amick and Patterson include the caveat that “the use of player or team options in the deal significantly impacts the final number,” but they don’t say whether the Pistons’ offer features either type of option.
Regardless, Duren is known to be seeking $40MM+ per year, which means he’d want at least $200MM on a five-year deal.
As Amick and Patterson point out, the five-year, $208MM rookie scale extension that Amen Thompson signed last week, which also includes a 10% trade kicker, may help strengthen Duren’s negotiating position. While Duren was an All-Star and made the All-NBA third team last season, Thompson received a contract worth $41.6MM annually without having achieved either feat.
Although a sign-and-trade deal sending Duren to Sacramento isn’t a concept the Pistons have entertained, the Kings continue to loom as a wild card in the process since they’d have the ability to create maximum-salary cap space to sign the young center next summer, Amick and Patterson observe. The Athletic’s duo classifies the Kings’ interest in Duren as “very strong” and suggest the 22-year-old intrigued by the idea of teaming up with rookie guard Darius Acuff Jr. in Sacramento.
League sources tell The Athletic that Duren has three “very serious” suitors, including the Kings. If he were to sign his $9.6MM qualifying offer this offseason, then signs a maximum-salary contract with one of those rival teams in 2027 as an unrestricted free agent, he would earn a projected $196.7MM over the next five seasons, since his projected max deal with a new team next summer would be worth about $187MM over four years.
Still, there’s no guarantee a maximum-salary offer would be waiting for Duren next offseason, especially if he suffers a major injury or his production drops off in 2026/27, so passing on a $190MM offer from the Pistons in order to potentially earn a few more million dollars would be a risky path to take. But Amick and Patterson say it’s an option that Duren is seriously considering, confirming reporting from Marc Stein.
As The Athletic’s reporters write, the Pistons are currently operating about $46MM below the luxury tax line without factoring in a cap charge for Duren, so even if they were to go all the way up to Duren’s max ($41.2MM), they shouldn’t have to worry about surpassing that threshold in 2026/27. However, with a lucrative new contract for Ausar Thompson likely on tap as well, Detroit could be a taxpayer down the road, so the team will want to try to get the best price possible on Duren and Thompson to keep their future cap hits in check to some extent.
Duren has opted to “keep his distance” from the team this summer, Amick and Patterson report, citing a league source who says the former Memphis Tiger wasn’t part of a mini-camp that Cade Cunningham organized in August and didn’t attend a party earlier this month at team owner Tom Gores’ home in Southern California.
It remains to be seen if Duren will be in attendance when the Pistons hold their media day on September 28. October 1 is the deadline for a player to sign his qualifying offer, though a team can push back that deadline if it so chooses.