The Pistons’ 2022 draft class is looking less like a foundation and more like a moving target.
Jalen Duren is the name hanging over everything now. Detroit hit on him with the 13th pick, and in hindsight he looks like the kind of player who could go in the top 5 if that draft were done over. But his situation is still unsettled, and that alone could leave the Pistons with a completely different outcome from the class they thought they were building.
That’s a sharp turn from where things started. Detroit used the 5th pick on Jaden Ivey, a selection the team would love to take back. Ivey is now out of the league and searching for work after the Pistons had to move him for Kevin Huerter and a pick swap.
The top 10 from that draft has not aged well overall. Keegan Murray, Jaden Ivey, Bennedict Mathurin, Jeremy Sochan and Johnny Davis are all part of a group that either hasn’t lived up to the billing or is out of the league altogether.
Detroit’s return on the Ivey deal is still a work in progress, though. The Pistons brought Huerter back as a free agent, which shows they viewed him as more than just salary ballast in the trade. The pick swap from Minnesota eventually became Ebuka Okorie, and if he develops into a contributor, the deal could start to look like a solid piece of business once you factor in Ivey’s trade value at the time.
Still, nobody in Detroit was aiming for this when Ivey went 5th.
Duren is the bigger question now. If you had to guess today, the odds still point to him being back with the Pistons next season, but that confidence has clearly slipped since the start of the summer.
There’s a business side to it - Duren and his agent are trying to maximize his value - but there’s also a sense that this has become personal. The Pistons didn’t extend him last offseason, then watched him go out and do exactly what they wanted, only to be undersold again.
You can see why Duren would believe he deserves a max deal. You can also see why Detroit won’t hand one out. No one else can really do it either without a sign-and-trade, which leaves that as the last-resort path.
It’s still difficult to picture that happening. But if it does, the Pistons would be left without any of the players they drafted in 2022, a class that was supposed to help shape the team’s long-term core.
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