{"id":894018,"date":"2026-09-16T11:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894018\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T11:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:22:16","slug":"jalen-duren-standoff-has-two-possible-plot-twists-on-october-1st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894018\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Duren standoff has two possible plot twists on October 1st"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tired of hearing about Jalen Duren yet? Me too!\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the drama continues and has taken new twists, as it was revealed recently that Duren is feeling disrespected by the paltry $190 million offer the Pistons have\u00a0reportedly made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who could blame\u00a0him?!?\u00a0I know I could never\u00a0live on\u00a0that little, so Duren is completely wise to torpedo his entire financial career because he wants $40 million a year instead of $38 million a year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I hope he is paying his agent overtime, as he is earning every penny!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In case it wasn\u2019t\u00a0blatantly\u00a0obvious this was sarcasm, you can strike everything I just said and reverse it, as Duren is making terrible money choices, terrible basketball choices and should probably put his agent and his phone<\/a> into one of Musk\u2019s rockets and shoot it into the Sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This still has a chance to end amicably, but on October 1st, this drama is going to take a new twist and there are two\u00a0possibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jalen Duren\u00a0has\u00a0until October…. or March\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Duren wants to go nuclear,\u00a0he\u2019ll\u00a0accept the Pistons\u2019 qualifying offer before the October 1st\u00a0deadline, which would make him an unrestricted free agent after next season and all but guarantee the Pistons trade him<\/a> before that happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the worst-case scenario for everyone involved, as Duren risks a ton of\u00a0money,\u00a0and the Pistons are stuck with an unhappy center who has one foot out the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other\u00a0option\u00a0is that the\u00a0Pistons\u00a0push back the deadline for him to accept the offer to March 1st, which they could do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This option comes with its own set of risks: If Duren\u00a0failed to\u00a0get a deal done before that deadline,\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0be a man without a team, go back into restricted free agency and\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0be able to play in the NBA until he signed. <\/p>\n

I doubt he wants\u00a0that and\u00a0am even more doubtful either side would let it get that far, but if the Pistons wanted to relieve some of the pressure of this situation, they could buy themselves more time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As much as this has been talked about and agonized over, it\u2019s still hard to envision a world in which Duren isn\u2019t on the Pistons next season, as the other options are so risky he\u2019d have to be the most over-confident person in the world to think he could come out ahead, as even a full max offer next offseason would only have him breaking even after giving up\u00a0such a huge chunk next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This will end at some point, but it may not be in October if Duren\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0yet ready to sever ties by taking the qualifying offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tired of hearing about Jalen Duren yet? Me too!\u00a0 But the drama continues and has taken new twists,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-894018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}