This Wasn't On Our Radar... | Daily Hawks News & Rumors

There's been a lot of talk, a lot of heat, a lot of, you know, like I said, where there's smoke, there's fire around Jalen Duran and the Pistons.

So the question has been, do we put together a trade package to try to acquire Duran, who's, you know, a 20 and 10 guy last season, 23 years old, clearly a big that we'd want to build around with the playmakers that we have and the youth that we have.

But do we want to try to clear up that in a sign and trade, try to clear up or clear the players that we would have to get rid of, you know, probably Onyeka and Dyson Daniels to make the salaries match with the sign and trade? Because he has till tomorrow to decide on whether he wants to play on a $9.6 million qualifying offer.

He's a restricted free agent.

Now, if he does and they don't give him the extension, well, he turned down the extension.

I mean, of course, they could always find a way to extend.

I'm assuming during the season, maybe not, maybe this is it.

You extend now or he becomes an unrestricted free agent for next season.

And that's the question.

Undoubtedly, he'd be a fantastic fit for us.

He'd be the big we're looking for.

But do we have to sacrifice those assets? And is, you know, if he's going to be an unrestricted free agent and he's looking around at teams and he's like, look, these Hawks that, depending on our success this year, but they have a young core, I'd fit in perfectly and they're going to have the cap space.

So if we're going to look at some of the cap space that we have, it looks like we, at minimum, with McCollum and Dort removed from the books because they have expiring contracts.

Assuming we don't extend Lou Dort.

We would, who else? Smaller deals.

We get a $50 million in cap space plus more if we can find a way to move Kispert.

And that would free up a ton of money for a guy who's looking for probably north of $35 a year, $40 a year.

At least that's what the offer he turned down in Detroit put him on $9.6 for this next season.

And then he had a four-year extension, roughly around $200.

So, yeah, I mean, he's going to be looking for in the 40s per season, which is fair given his production.

And if you're looking at like the culture that he would want to play in, it's still kind of shocking to me that Detroit's not trying to find more for him to keep him.

I mean, they have Cade Cunningham.

They have a great core.

I guess I haven't looked at their finances and their books.

But it just seems like he'd be a guy that would be on the we sign at all costs kind of list.