The end of the 2025-26 NBA regular season marked a high point for those who fancy themselves residents of Jalen Duren Island. The fourth-year big man had increased his scoring average by 7.7 PPG, made his first All-Star team, and successfully led the Detroit Pistons through an eleven-game stretch without Cade Cunningham.
Fast forward to the present day, and all that good equity Duren built up heading into a crucial offseason contract-wise has faded. Duren’s PPG average is down to 10.1 (the lowest mark since his rookie year), the Pistons are 10.4 points per 100 possessions worse with Duren on the floor than when he’s on the bench, and he didn’t make even play in the final 17 minutes of Detroit’s biggest game of the season.
Once their season ultimately ends, the Pistons face a myriad of questions. Do they pay Duren? If so, how much do they pay him? If they don’t, can they sign-and-trade him? What would his value look like to a different team?
To figure all this out, you need to answer one question: Is Duren a regular-season stat-pad merchant, or do the Pistons’ roster flaws make the 22-year-old look worse than he is?
What Is Duren’s Fault
Duren is a physical marvel, capable of thunderous slams off rolls and dump-off passes from the dunker spot. Duren’s broad frame, length (7’5 wingspan), and jumping ability also make him an intimidating force in the paint and a vacuum on the offensive/defensive glass.
It is hard not to look at Duren and be impressed. He looks like the 90s big men that many fans grew up idealizing. Karl Malone, Alonzo Mourning, and Patrick Ewing put him next to any of those guys, and he looks like he belongs.
Unfortunately for Duren and the Pistons, looks can be deceiving. While Duren has the body of a 90s superstar, he also has their stiffness. Duren is very high-waisted and lacks the side-to-side agility you need to be a great pick-and-roll defensive big in today’s game.
Duren also lacks the natural feel/instinct you need to be a truly dominant paint protector. Too often, he is out of position defensively, as you see in the first clip in the montage below. In the second clip, Duren fails to realize that he is on a relatively weak shooter in Evan Mobley and stays glued to him instead of providing extra resistance in the paint on the drive.
Offensively, Duren has worked hard to expand his game outside of assisted finishes around the rim. Pistons’ fans have grown accustomed to seeing the big fella take a couple of dribbles from the perimeter before barrelling into the chest of whoever sits in front of him. This season, his unassisted field goal rate (35.2%, per Dunks & Threes) is the highest it has ever been.
However, there is a difference between being able to beat weaker teams in the regular season and consistently being able to bully-ball his way through fierce playoff opposition, especially with all the increased physicality that referees have been allowing this postseason. There is also a feeling that Duren’s muscles may be more aesthetic than functional, as he’s struggled to consistently overpower the frailer combination of Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
This is where having counters is so important. When you are a premier player (like Duren was in the regular season), teams are going to try to find ways to take you off the board (more on this in a moment). The great playoff players are able to find ways to work around this by searching deeper into their bag of tricks. For Duren’s player type, that normally includes being able to execute quick hitters from the low block. This is not yet part of Duren’s offensive vocabulary. During the regular season, while he was effective in those spots, he only averaged 1.6 post-up possessions per game (per NBA.com). That number is even lower in the playoffs (1.2 per game). Of the 17 players who have logged at least ten post-ups this postseason, Duren ranks 13th – trailing behind the likes of Scottie Barnes, Paul George, and even his less-physically imposing teammate, Tobias Harris.
What Isn’t Duren’s Fault
Against this matchup, the Cleveland Cavaliers have started to tag Duren’s rolls early to derail his runaway to the rim (a tactic the Pistons actually started copying in Game 5), like this:
They are also blitzing/hard hedging Cunningham on his ball screens and daring the soon-to-be All-NBA guard to hit passes outside of the one he’s been used to throwing to Duren all season long. Some of this falls on Cunningham’s broad shoulders, as he’s struggled to hit more advanced skip passes. However, a lot of this stems from Detroit’s lack of shooting/secondary creation. During the regular season, the Pistons were second-to-last in 3-point rate, and right now, they can’t field lineups with the ability to burn all the extra attention the Cavaliers are throwing at Cunningham and Duren without sacrificing value on the defensive side of the ball.
When the Pistons try to create more space for Duren (like playing him without Ausar Thompson), it puts a great burden on Duren to be a defensive stalwart. He’s had some great moments contesting shots around the rim, but even when he does, without Thompson on the floor, the Pistons are ill-equipped to clean up misses on the glass, leading to second-chance points for the opposition. According to PBP Stats, the Pistons have a defensive rating of 117.8 when Duren is on the floor without Thompson (104 minutes). For reference, the average defensive rating this postseason is 112.3 (remember, when it comes to defensive rating, the lower, the better).
The Bottom Line
Duren won’t turn 23 until next November. He is young and still has plenty of room for growth. The lessons he’s learned from this postseason will surely inspire him to further add to his off-the-dribble game. However, Duren’s other weaknesses (feel, instinct, and mobility) are a lot trickier to remedy, and barring some unprecedented growth in those areas, he will always be limited as a player because of those shortcomings.
The pessimistic outlook on Duren seems to place him in a similar vein to Deandre Ayton, another big man who had the visual makeup of an elite big man but lacked the soft skills to truly reach that frontier. Ayton was notoriously overpaid following his rookie deal (signing a rookie max extension), something the Pistons will desperately want to avoid (despite my formula for estimated production value painting him as someone worth that amount, based solely on regular-season production).
With that said, Duren still can help you tally a ton of regular-season victories, as he demonstrated this past season. At the end of the day, players are paid for what they do during the 82-game portion of the NBA calendar. Detroit shouldn’t just give up on Duren; rather, they need to negotiate an annual salary more akin to that of a Nicolas Claxton or Myles Turner (right in that mid-20 million per year range).
It isn’t that simple, though. Since Duren is a restricted free agent, a team that is really high on his abilities can throw big money at the big man and dare Detroit to match them (kind of like what happened with the Phoenix Suns and Ayton). If that happens, the Pistons can’t let history repeat itself and just let the tantalizing, yet flawed, All-Star center walk for nothing.
