Jalen Duren meets the restricted free agency torture rack

A lesson for young NBA would-be stars.

Good morning. It's July 23 and LeBron James is still a free agent. Let's basketball.

Reports suggest that the Pistons and Jalen Duren didn't get anywhere close to negotiating a real rookie extension deal last summer on account of Duren's camp wanting the max and Detroit declining to offer it. The Pistons wanted to see more, so the path was set for a "prove it" year for Duren ahead of restricted free agent. And Duren proved it alright: the Pistons won 60 games and the No. 1 seed, and Duren became an All-Star and was named to third team All-NBA. That is max extension material.

It's too bad for Duren they couldn't negotiate the contract right there at the end of the regular season. Because he was atrocious in the playoffs – just completely overmatched over two series against the Magic and Cavaliers – and now he's in RFA hell.

Duren never really had a bird in hand since his camp started 2025 posturing at the max and don't appear to have come off of that foundation. But he clearly thought he could get the Pistons there, that he could prove he deserved it. And for the entire regular season – including a late-season stretch when Cade Cunningham was out with a collapsed lung – it seemed like he was right. It felt like Duren had locked in a 25% max. And then it all spun out of control. Some analysts thought the Pistons would still fork over the money, albeit with a little more trepidation, to maintain high spirits and vibes. Instead, Trajan Langdon and the crew decided to use the immense team-skewed power of restricted free agency to its fullest. And Duren is still unsigned with basically no teams out there sitting on cap space to make an offer sheet.

Duren would become the best player in modern NBA history to take the offer sheet if he did so. That would be an incredible risk based on how the postseason resolved and the fact that it's unlikely there will be a plethora of cap space teams in a year as extensions get announced. But it's also a risk to the Pistons given that they salary-dumped Isaiah Stewart, the team's other defense-first big man. The downside of losing Duren is massive, even if the risk of that happening is small.