Jalen Duren’s restricted free agency has turned into one of those situations where the money, the feelings and the old connections are all tangled together - and somehow the Knicks are still in the middle of it.
That trace goes back to draft night in 2022, when Charlotte took Duren with the No. 13 pick, sent him to New York, and then the Knicks flipped him to Detroit. He’s spent the past four seasons with the Pistons, but the fifth may not be settled yet. Detroit still hasn’t reached a new deal with him, and Duren is at least entertaining what life could look like somewhere else, with Sacramento drawing real attention.
The Kings were among the teams he met with early in free agency, which made sense because he already had a tie to someone in that front office: Scott Perry, the former Knicks executive who is now Sacramento’s GM. Marc Spears said Monday on ESPN’s NBA Today that Duren "likes" Perry and the Kings "a lot," while also noting that the Pistons are still pushing to bring him back.
That Sacramento link has only grown more interesting because of what’s been reported since. If Duren takes his $9.6 million qualifying offer, he’d hit unrestricted free agency next summer. And according to Sam Amick and Hunter Patterson of The Athletic last Friday, the Kings "still have very strong interest" in him and could be positioned to offer a max deal next summer if they choose.
Perry wanted Duren once before in New York. Now, he could finally land him in Sacramento.
Detroit’s side of this has gotten messy fast. Spears said Duren feels "disrespected" by the Pistons, which lines up with other reporting, including that he received information he shouldn’t have heard - among it, that Detroit values Ausar Thompson over him. That’s not the kind of noise a team wants hanging around its center with training camp only a couple of weeks away.
The tension is especially striking because Duren just put together the kind of season that should have made this a straightforward keep-him-in-Detroit decision. He made All-NBA and earned his first All-Star nod last season. The Pistons’ biggest offseason priority was to lock him up.
Instead, the two sides are still far apart. The Athletic reported that Duren wants more than $200 million over five years, while Detroit has a five-year, $190 million offer on the table.
It’s fair to wonder why he’d risk walking away from that kind of money, particularly with Sacramento in the mix. Spears said he heard the issue isn’t about money, but if the Kings are really part of the conversation, money is inevitably part of it.
Even if Duren accepts the qualifying offer, Detroit would still be dealing with a situation that could linger into the season and become a distraction. That’s the last thing the Pistons want as they try to build on last year’s success, when they finished atop the East and reached the semifinals for the first time since 2008.
For now, the Knicks’ role in all this is accidental but real. Their draft-night stopover helped set the path, and the fallout has now reached a point where Detroit is fighting to keep Duren, Sacramento is waiting in the wings, and the center may already be looking at life somewhere else.
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For New York, the appeal is obvious, but so is the challenge. The Knicks have been combing the market for ways to add another capable perimeter piece, yet their roster and financial wiggle room are tight enough that any move has to be carefully measured. That leaves Konchar in an awkward spot for the moment: a useful fit for a contender, but one whose next landing place may come down to which interested team can create the cleanest path. [Read more 🡒]