The Detroit Pistons have one clear offseason hold-up still sitting in front of everything else: the Jalen Duren situation. But once that gets resolved, it won’t just finish the offseason business. It will force a roster move, too.
Detroit already has 15 players on its full-time roster, so when Duren signs, someone has to go to keep the team within roster limits. And with the Pistons carrying a deep group, the squeeze is real. Plenty of players have some kind of case for minutes, but a few names stand out as the ones most likely to be pushed to the margins.
At the center of the decision are four players: Tolu Smith, Chaz Lanier, Taurean Prince and Gary Harris. None of them are expected to open the season in the rotation, and one of them may not be on the roster at all.
Smith is an interesting one because he may actually matter most. He’s currently lined up as the third center, which gives Detroit a reason to keep him around in case injuries hit either of the top two bigs.
He also already showed he can fill in when needed, appearing in 15 games last season as an emergency backup. That makes it easier to picture him sticking, especially with only two players ahead of him.
Lanier had a strong Summer League, but the roster math works against him. Detroit added shooters at his position, and that makes his path to real rotation minutes look pretty crowded. A move to a two-way deal is one possibility if the Pistons need the roster spot, and while he still has upside, he could be the one squeezed out if the team leans veteran.
Prince, meanwhile, looks more likely than Lanier to actually play next season. Detroit doesn’t have much depth at power forward, and the team values his 3-point shooting off the bench. That gives him a clearer lane than the younger options around him.
That leaves Harris as the most likely candidate to be the odd man out when Duren signs. He played in 48 games last season and didn’t do much, though the Pistons will have to weigh his experience against Lanier’s upside. Harris has been a useful role player at points in his career, and that kind of veteran presence can still carry weight.
So once Duren’s deal finally gets done, the roster crunch should settle on one of two names: Chaz Lanier or Gary Harris. And it may not take long at all for the Pistons to make that call.
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Jalen Duren Idea Would Force Pistons To Rethink Their Identity
The Pistons have spent recent seasons trying to build around a young core, and Jalen Duren has been part of that foundation in the middle. So when The Game Theory Podcast floated a speculative sign-and-trade framework, it naturally landed as more than just offseason chatter. The idea centered on Detroit shifting from its current interior-first look toward a different kind of lineup balance, one that could better fit the evolving shape of the roster.
At the heart of the concept is the kind of player Detroit has been linked to in theory for a while, a stretch five who can open the floor, plus another creator who can ease some pressure on the ball-handlers. Even so, the discussion also underscored how dramatic a move like this would be for the Pistons, because it would ask them to rethink both their identity and the role Duren has played in it. For now, it reads as a thought exercise more than a realistic transaction, but it is the sort of idea that tends to linger because it touches on so many of Detroits biggest questions. [Read more 🡒]