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Jalen Duren is no longer the young, promising former first-round pick with untapped potential. It’s starting to be realized. In his fourth NBA season, the Pistons’ starting center has blossomed into an array of middies, post hooks, double-doubles and self-made buckets.
Averages of 17.9 points and 10.6 boards, plus nearly a block and a steal per game, begin to tell the story of his budding All-Star campaign. He’s putting up 11 shots—four more than last season—a game and hitting 63 percent of them. His usage rate this season skyrocketed to the second most on the team, up to 22.7 percent, eight points higher than his rookie year.
He’s making reads out of the short roll, dishing to slashers and corner three-point shooters with added ease. He’s taking fellow centers off the dribble with no mercy. And he’s the first player since Dwight Howard in 2010 to drop 30 and 15 in a game on at least 90 percent shooting from the field.
There aren’t many bigs in the League who have the size, speed and quickness to keep up with Duren’s expanded offensive arsenal. In the post, he’s a bully. In the mid-range, it’s all finesse. Off the bounce, he’s simply gone.
Duren’s increased production and playmaking abilities already had him briskly sprinting toward the Most Improved Player award. But as soon as he hits a tween behind-the-back pull-up three, or crosses over a big on his way down the lane toward an and-one, that ceiling looks much, much higher.
Except the jump hasn’t been exclusive to just this season. Duren’s ascension, alongside the Pistons’, started in early 2025 when the team began its push for their first playoff appearance in six years. Following the 2025 All-Star break, Duren strung together 17 double-doubles. Entering this season, the 6-10 Pennsylvania native was set on proving that the tides in Detroit were still turning.
“Yeah, just to continue to show that it wasn't just a fluke, that we are a great team that’s on the rise,” Duren says when asked about last season. “Me, myself, I wanted to kind of take my next step, take another leap in my career, another leap in my development, and kind of just show the League that, yeah, I’m here and sky’s the limit for me and whatever I can achieve and also with my teammates.”
While the spotlight eluded Detroit for years, Duren remained tucked away in the gym. Grinding. His growth isn’t a result of an abstract training regimen or a drastic shift in his routine—just good old-fashioned hard work. Over the summer, he split his time between the gym and whatever screen he had the Pistons’ postseason games queued up on. His first career playoff run posed numerous opportunities to learn, a theme that followed him for the past six months. He analyzed the schemes that defenses threw at him and the areas where he could be more effective. And just a few weeks after the 2024-25 campaign ended, he was back in the gym with head coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
“I feel like, for me, the game just slowed down. I'm in year four now. I’ve got a lot of games under my belt, but I still [have] got a long way to go,” Duren says. “For me, it came down to watching film, talking to my coaches—J.B. expressing what he’s seeing from me and how he’s seeing my growth and development coming. And from there, he gave me the confidence to just keep developing and keep growing.”
Bickerstaff had been planning for him and Duren’s concealed one-on-one sessions well before the season concluded and informed his star big man that after he took some time away, they would hit the ground running. Soon after their series against the Knicks concluded, Duren and his head coach holed up in the Henry Ford Health Pistons Performance Center for the next two weeks.
“We worked on a lot of balance stuff, a lot of low-post work, a lot of touch around the rim, finishing around the basket, a lot of shot mechanics,” Duren says. “And I followed that blueprint throughout the whole summer, so it was good.”
The highly detailed plan led to success right out of the gate, as Duren posted three 30-point double-doubles within the first four weeks of the season. It’s evident every time he starts the break or initiates an offensive set in the half-court that Jalen Duren’s got the green light.
His expanded comfort level with the rock has been a result of a constant quest for knowledge. At 22 years old, Duren’s desire for new tools, insights and understanding is unrivaled. He’s actively picking the brains of bigs that came before him, like his former coach at Memphis and Pistons’ legend Rasheed Wallace. And ever since Vitaly Potapenko joined the coaching staff as an assistant in 2024, Duren’s been heeding the advice of the former NBA center, too.
Duren built off the fluidity and balance he was honing with Bickerstaff and translated the concepts into his post workouts with Potapenko. “It really was a lot of, some people would call it ‘boring days,’ where we just broke down the details of every movement, broke down the details of every move, every counter and just repped it out. Just repped it out over and over and over again until it got to the point where it was second nature,” Duren says. “I mean, during his time in the League, he was who he was, and he’s given me a little bit of what he had.”
Instead of taking a vacation during last season’s All-Star break, Duren went back to his old stomping grounds in Philly to reconnect with Sheed for two-a-days. They’d start every workout with ladder drills, then slowly dive deeper and deeper into the coordination of his footwork on face-ups, the low block and the perimeter.
“Great coaches, great players, I like to pick their brains and get their point of view on a lot of things. So he just really explained where I could grow at, spots that he was effective in when he played that he felt like I could master, too,” Duren says. “So it wasn't really just a skill aspect. It was being able to move better, being able to control my body, being able to be strong in certain positions, being able to stay on balance in certain positions. So there was a lot that went into it.”
From the work came results. At 28-10 as of press time, the Pistons are sitting pretty at the top of the Eastern Conference. But inside the Pistons Performance Center in mid-December, Duren couldn’t pinpoint one moment or an exact game where he felt the tides shifting even further. “I think just out the gate, I kind of was in the mindset of just, Let’s go,” he says. “We did a little bit last year. We had a small sample of success, but I want more. And I know my teammates want more. I know the coaches want more. I know the city wants more. So it’s a mindset thing.”
In the 313, the Pistons are beholden to a dawg mentality. All bark. All bite. The gritty, hard-nosed anthem sprouted from a team full of players with the same mindset, the same characteristics, the same morals. Guys who have been underdogs, who have a chip on their shoulders. Guys who want everything that comes with the game, good and bad. And it started when the Pistons drafted Isaiah Stewart and then Jalen Duren, the founding members of the Dawg Pound.
“Just doing all the dirty work, being bigs who like to get physical, like to bang, get on the floor, whatever the case may be,” Duren says on how the moniker came to be. “And then from there, we got Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland came, and those guys, their games speak for themselves. That’s Dawg Pound, through and through.”
Joined by Paul Reed, the five members extended the vibes roster-wide, with a sign now hanging in their locker room denoting the team motto. It’s felt when Duren and Ausar fly in for posters off lobs. It’s represented in the WWE-style belt that Duren was toting around during our shoot and in the massive boom box that’s blasting just outside of the tunnel before warm-ups.
“We’ve got a bunch of dawgs on our team, top to bottom. It's hard to even pinpoint one or two,” Duren says. “I feel like everybody’s a dawg on our team. I think the city kind of even embodies what we bring. The dawg mentality is Detroit, so it just became the aura of the team, the energy of the team.”
The vibes in Detroit are high, with a roster that mirrors the best eras and characteristics of previous Pistons squads. Yet Duren knows their collective journey is just beginning. The days of stacking more losses than dubs aren’t far behind them. But those days also built the mental fortitude that’s reflected on a nightly basis.
“The guys that were here and that went through it, it kind of built that mental toughness and understanding. I mean, we were at the bottom,” he says. “And once you hit the bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. So I think it built a great deal of mental toughness throughout, not even just me, but the teammates that were here, the coaches that were here, it kind of brought us closer together.”
The shared struggle is making the success they're enjoying this season that much sweeter. There’s an appreciation, a pride, with every win and every day that gets them closer to their goal. And for the Pistons’ big man, a confirmation that the work he’s been banking is doing more than putting him on the map, it’s helping to fuel the identity of an organization.
“I think day in and day out, we come in here and we work and we understand the goal. We understand that the rest of the League, the rest of the world might not see us how we see us. They might not respect us, or they might not believe in us. But the guys that come in this gym and lace up their sneaks and get on the floor all believe in the same goal,” Duren says. “We all believe in the same mission, and that’s what gives me the confidence, like, OK, we’ve got something special. Because I feel like everybody, 1 through 15, every coach, every front office member, everybody that puts on the jersey, everybody that puts on the uniform, everybody that represents the Pistons all have the same mindset and the same goals. That gives me the utmost confidence that, OK, we're all on the same accord.”
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