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Among the team’s priorities is retaining center Jalen Duren, who is eligible for a contract extension. “I want him here,” Trajan Langdon said. “We really want JD to be here.” Langdon also praised owner Tom Gores' commitment to the organization, saying the franchise has consistently received the resources needed to support players and staff. “There’s never been a no,” Langdon said when discussing requests made to ownership. “The success that we’ve had wouldn’t have happened without his contributions and overall commitment.”
"We all want to get better," he said. "I can’t stand here and say we don’t want to get better, so getting better means you’ve gotta win the second round to get better. It doesn’t necessarily mean we need to win 64 games, I don’t think we’re trying to do that though if we do that would be fantastic. But I think we know that we need to be more equipped to compete in the postseason and that’s what we’re looking at doing. Like I already said, it’s adding pieces that help accentuate our three best players, our core three players, and I think that will help us in the regular season and postseason as well. That all goes into the belief we feel like we can be better."
Omari Sankofa II: Langdon smiled when asked about extension talks with Duren and Thompson: "There haven’t been, at this point … and to be honest you’ll never know how those conversations are going."
There are several restricted free agents the Lakers have already done their due diligence on, sources familiar with the team's thinking told ESPN. Two of them, Jalen Duren of the Detroit Pistons and Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz, would satisfy Doncic's directive to secure an A-list center. Two others, Peyton Watson of the Denver Nuggets and Tari Eason of the Rockets, are the type of 3-and-D archetypes who any team needs in order to succeed in the modern NBA.
Detroit executive Trajan Langdon publicly expressed his desire to retain forward Tobias Harris, who was the team’s second-leading scorer in the playoffs. The Pistons will also work with Jalen Duren on a new deal amid his restricted free agency. In addition, a Reaves pursuit would require more acrobatics than Simone Biles in the Olympics. Detroit would have to pick up the $4 million team option on Daniss Jenkins, renounce cap holds on Harris, Kevin Huerter, and Malik Beasley, waive Duncan Robinson, likely trade Caris LeVert and one of Paul Reed or Marcus Sasser, and decline Tolu Smith’s $2.4 million team option to be able to offer Reaves a max contract, as outlined by salary cap expert Yossi Gozlan.
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On the other hand, Duren is only 22 and coming off an All-Star regular season, and cap-room teams like Brooklyn and Chicago will be circling with offer sheets if the Pistons get cold feet. A five-year, $200 million deal would value him at $40 million a year and keep him in Detroit through much of his prime; that feels like a potential endpoint.
Sources around the league say they believe Duren will get more than $30 million per year. The question for Detroit is how big that number will get. As Langdon said, a hefty price tag for Duren cuts down on the Pistons' future flexibility quite a bit.
The expectation around the league is that the Utah Jazz will match any offer sheet Walker Kessler receives, and executives hold a similar view regarding Detroit and Jalen Duren. Another restricted free agent center at least worth monitoring is Mark Williams in Phoenix (yeah, the guy the Lakers traded for before rescinding the deal). But it’s only logical to wonder why the Suns would give up assets to acquire Williams only to let him walk a season later.
Tim Bontemps: Sources around the league say they believe Jalen Duren will get more than $30 million per year. The question for Detroit is how big that number will get. As Langdon said, a hefty price tag for Duren cuts down on the Pistons' future flexibility quite a bit. The same goes for Thompson, a terrific defender whose offensive game lags. He averaged under 10 points in the regular season and is a career 20.4% 3-point shooter who has shot a combined 1-for-9 from 3-point range across 20 career playoff games.
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Duren would make $49.5 million starting next season with the final year of his deal in 2030-31, assuming Detroit didn’t extend him before then, being roughly $65.3 million. I don’t expect the front office to offer Duren the max, nor do I expect the Pistons to make Duren’s camp shop for a deal, though they can offer Duren more than any other team. There’s a general sense around the league, as things stand today, that negotiations likely began far apart and will eventually come to a middle ground in the ballpark of a five-year, $200 million to $220 million deal — landing Duren an average annual value of $40 million to $44 million. Duren underperformed during the postseason, but the fact remains he made his first All-Star appearance and All-NBA third selection. Plus, he’ll start next season at 22 years old.
As we’ve seen previously with Leonard and the Toronto Raptors, even winning a title isn’t enough to keep him around long term. What’s more, as one rival executive from another team that has an interest in Leonard shared with The Athletic, there is skepticism that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is truly willing to trade Leonard. Since Pistons president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon has been at the helm, he’s prioritized optionality. Neither Duren, 22, nor Thompson, 23, has reached their prime. It’d be a short-sighted move to ship either of them off for a player in Leonard, who turns 35 on June 29 with no guarantee he’d want to be around for the bulk of Cade Cunningham’s best years.
Jovan Buha: "Yes, they can keep Austin Reaves if they were to sign Jalen Duren. I continue to say that Austin Reaves' contract situation is separate from the Lakers' cap space. Now, technically it relates to the cap space in the sense of if Austin walks, the Lakers would get an additional 21 million in cap space, but you are not replacing Austin Reaves with 21 million dollars. So, assuming that they keep him on the cap hold and re-sign him to some number above that, which again, I think is the way this is going to play out, that projected cap space that the Lakers would have to sign Jalen Duren or make an offer sheet for him would be separate from Austin."
Though there's a chance, especially after the impasse between the two sides last summer and fall during his extension negotiations, that Duren could seek a suitor to give him a hefty offer sheet that the Pistons would all but certainly match. "If he wants to get a max, they'll tell him to go get one," an East executive told ESPN. "But he's Cade's guy, so they'll have to play it the right way.
