{"id":917562,"date":"2026-10-02T07:22:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T07:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917562\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T07:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T07:22:19","slug":"jalen-duren-to-re-sign-with-pistons-on-five-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917562\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Duren To Re-Sign With Pistons On Five-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pistons restricted free agent center Jalen Duren<\/a> will sign a five-year, $200MM contract to stay in Detroit, agent Chafie Fields tells Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"Duren\u2019s new contract is fully guaranteed, Charania adds. It\u2019s a straight five-year deal, a source tells Sam Amick of The Athletic (Twitter link<\/a>), with no options or incentives.<\/p>\n

Duren waited until the last minute to accept Detroit\u2019s guaranteed $200MM proposal, which Charania says had been on the table for the past two weeks (Twitter link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

During the past month, the value of Detroit\u2019s five-year offer to Duren reportedly increased from $175MM<\/a> to $190MM<\/a> and then eventually to $200MM<\/a>. The Pistons were said to have included weight-related incentives in some previous offers but didn\u2019t ultimately include that language in their final proposal.<\/p>\n

Duren had until 11:59 pm ET to decide<\/a> whether to accept his one-year, $9.6MM qualifying offer to hit unrestricted free agency next year or sign the five-year, $200MM deal. His new contract is worth a little more than what his total projected salary ($198.8MM) would have been over the next five years had signed the QO and then signed a four-year max deal with a rival team next summer.<\/p>\n

According to Charania, Duren was mulling his options all the way up to the deadline and had been hoping for possible sign-and-trade scenarios to emerge, but the Pistons showed no interest in entertaining those concepts throughout the offseason and held firm on their final offer.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Duren decided that potentially risking $190MM to take his chances as an unrestricted free agent next year wasn\u2019t worth it. The consensus among both rival team executives and other agents is that Duren arrived at the \u201csensible decision,\u201d tweets<\/a> Jake Fischer of The Stein Line and Bleacher Report.<\/p>\n

The Pistons have about $46MM in room below the luxury tax line before accounting for Duren\u2019s contract, giving them the cap flexibility to structure it in a variety of ways. We\u2019ll have to wait and see which path the team takes as far as that goes.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old big man is coming off a fourth NBA season in which he averaged 19.5 points, 10.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 0.8 blocks while shooting 65.0% from the field and 74.7% from the foul line in 70 regular season contests (28.2 minutes per game). Duren was named to his first All-Star game and earned a spot on the All-NBA third team, which made him eligible for a five-year, $287MM contract from Detroit (as opposed to the 25% max of $239.2MM over five years).<\/p>\n

As productive as he was during the regular season, Duren\u2019s disappointing 2026 playoff showing clouded his outlook to some extent. He averaged 10.2 PPG, 8.5 RPG, 2.1 APG and 1.2 BPG while shooting 51.4% from the floor and 67.4% from the line in 14 postseason outings (30.1 MPG). The top-seeded Pistons were eliminated in the second round by Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Duren reportedly felt \u201cdisrespected<\/a>\u201d by the way negotiations transpired and his disappointment stemmed in part from Detroit\u2019s $20MM per year<\/a> offer last fall, when he was eligible for a rookie scale extension. His new contract doubles that figure on an annual basis, even though an agreement took three-plus months of restricted free agency to be reached.<\/p>\n

The 13th overall pick in the 2022 draft, Duren had averaged 11.5 PPG, 10.2 RPG, 2.1 APG and 0.9 BPG in 206 regular season appearances (26.6 MPG) in his first three seasons leading up to 2025\/26. Duren also averaged 11.8 PPG, 10.7 RPG, 3.5 APG and 1.7 BPG in six games (33.8 MPG) during the 2025 playoffs, when Detroit was eliminated in the first round by New York.<\/p>\n

Duren missed<\/a> Monday\u2019s media day as well as the start<\/a> of training camp while waiting to see how the process would play out. The Pistons technically could have pushed back the Oct. 1 qualifying offer deadline, but president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon suggested Monday<\/a> that the idea didn\u2019t appeal to the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has until Thursday to make a decision, and we will be excited to have him in regardless of what decision he does make,\u201d Langdon said during his media day availability. \u201cHe was a huge reason for our success these last two seasons. Had a tremendous season individually last year, as well. We believe he will do the same thing this year upcoming and are excited to have him back when he gets back. We\u2019ll integrate him and he\u2019s going to have a fantastic season regardless of his decision. We look forward to getting him back.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 Regardless of what his decision is, what we can control is the way that we welcome him in when he makes that decision. He is going to be a huge part of the team regardless of what decision he does make. He will be a Detroit Piston and we\u2019ll do everything we can to support him and get the best version of him, which is what we\u2019ve done the past two years, and that will not change. Those are things that we can control. The decision is not one we can control.\u201d<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether hard feelings will linger following the protracted contract negotiations or whether the two sides are prepared to put it behind them and move forward on a long-term union. For what it\u2019s worth, Duren will become eligible to be traded as of January 15.<\/p>\n

Duren came in at No. 1 on our list of this year\u2019s top 50 free agents<\/a> and was the last of those 50 players to reach an agreement on a new deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pistons restricted free agent center Jalen Duren will sign a five-year, $200MM contract to stay in Detroit, agent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,18735,459,82],"class_list":["post-917562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jalen-duren","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}