CLEVELAND − Behold the 22-year-old with it all figured out.
I’ve never seen one. Detroit Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff hasn’t ever seen one, either.
Mostly because he pays attention in this life and understands that cementing an image of someone that young is a fool’s game and, frankly, not a game at all. So, no, Bickerstaff wasn’t going to yank his 22-year-old center from the starting lineup. And, no, he wasn’t going to do anything that would undermine his belief in Jalen Duren.
Sit him for an entire fourth quarter of a second-round playoff series? OK, that he did to Duren. He kept him on the bench for overtime, too, in Game 5 on Wednesday, May 13.
But there is a difference between riding the hot hand and telling a player he’s no longer worthy of taking a chance on at the beginning of a game, especially a player who’d shown what Duren had during the regular season.
“I know people can judge however they want to judge, but you’re looking at this big picture and long term, right?” Bickerstaff said before the Pistons beat the Cavaliers in Game 6 on Friday. “[Duren is] going to be a huge part of what we do for a long time. And what does it say about us if in … difficult times, we choose to give up?”
Duren played his best ball of the postseason with the season on the line. He did this after weeks of criticism, his own second-guessing, daily questions from almost anyone who paying attention to these NBA playoffs and wondering what had happened to the young center’s game.
He looked tentative and lost and even overwhelmed. He was outplayed by centers not as gifted. He’d lost his touch and his motor and his awareness and his hands; suddenly, he couldn’t catch, after catching everything all season in those expansive mitts.
His drop-off in points and rebounds and aura became a meme, then a cruel joke, as someone pointed out that only Wilt Chamberlain had fallen so precipitously in scoring in a season once the playoffs began. Then again, Chamberlain averaged 50 that year and still managed 35 a game in the playoffs.
That 15-point drop remains the most in NBA history, and six more than Duren’s drop from 19 points to 10 per game. Still, it’s relative; Duren’s output had fallen by almost half. Worse, the numbers backed up what everyone was seeing − and what Duren was feeling.
No wonder Bickerstaff kept supporting him every time he was asked what was going on with Duren. He didn’t want to lose him long term. He also knew at some point Duren would get out of his own way and make a difference now.
At least he hoped.
He was right.
On Friday night, in the Pistons’ biggest game of the season, Duren finally hooped. Simply. Forcefully. Confidently. Joyfully.
“He was imposing his will on the game,” Bickerstaff said.
‘Y’all don’t know me’
The final giveaway came in the second quarter when he grabbed a rebound and took off down the court, leading the break, reminding why the combo of his size (6 feet 10, 250 pounds) and dexterity has been so tantalizing. There he was, dribbling freely, head up, in search of a teammate to finish the play.
He hadn’t pushed the ball like that since the regular season, and when asked about that moment after the game, he thought for a second and acknowledged that, yeah, it was a sign of his liberation.
“That is me being in my groove because it’s not even something I think about,” he said as he sat at his stall, his massive feet in a tub of ice. “It’s not like, ‘OK, let me try and take this.’ It’s natural. I do think that’s part of me being in a good rhythm, a good groove, and that’s a rhythm I haven’t been able to find.”
Until Friday night.
That it took a while is natural, too. The norm, as it were, and as it should be. If everyone were a prodigy, we’d collapse under all that perfection.
Bickerstaff deserves credit for sticking with Duren, for letting him breathe, for encouraging him to breathe. Duren deserves credit for sticking with Duren as well, a gift, he knows; some go a lifetime seeking a sense of self this youngster seems to have.
“Sticks and stones …” he said.
Why this phrase, someone asked?
“I say ‘sticks and stones’ because what the world think about me never hurt me,” he said. “I care about the people around me, my family’s opinion and my closest friends. No offense to y’all, but I couldn’t care less what y’all say. Because y’all don’t know me personally. Y’all know me as a basketball player. Y’all know me as Jalen Duren, No. 0, Jalen Duren, the center for the Pistons, but y’all don’t know me, and the world doesn’t know me. So, I never take that and let myself get down, and I always understand who I am and who I’ve been and who I can be.”
Whether he’ll get there and fulfill his immense and obvious promise is a question that won’t be answered for a while. Yet we know enough about human nature to understand his odds of getting there diminish without certain circumstances around him.
Opportunity, for one. Belief, for another. From the coaching staff, yes – Duren said the developmental staff and loads of film work helped him see what he’d been doing (and not doing) the first month of the playoffs – and also from teammates.
‘I’ve never questioned my ability’
They’ve hounded him with support and showered him with their conviction … in him. Bickerstaff cultivates that in the locker room. Still, players have to act on it, and they have.
“I’ve never questioned my ability,” Duren said. “I work out in the gym, I do everything I need to do to be successful. But sometimes things don’t go your way, and that’s cool. I have the support system, my team … keeping me going, pushing me, man.”
Reminding him.
Reminding him that while this is a professional sport and thus a repository for irrational passions (thank goodness), the rules of human psychology still apply. Bickerstaff wasn’t about to waver in his support for what he and this franchise consider a foundational piece.
Quibble with that assessment if you must. (Or howl in disgust.)
If the Pistons are right, though – and I’d wager they are based on Duren’s hands (not the two left ones he’s played with this postseason, but the soft left and right combo he displayed the six months before) and based on his feet, his vision, his shot – yes, the form and function are there, quite clearly.
Also, the way he works, and his temperament; self-awareness isn’t a perfect predictor of future success during times of struggle, but it’s a heckuva arrow in the quiver, and Duren continues to show he knows who he is.
Just as critically, he knows what he can be, which is, at the least, a version of what he showed in Cleveland on Friday night under all that weight.
None of this guarantees anything, of course. Not a repeat performance in Game 7, and certainly not a rose petal-strewn path to playoff greatness … or even playoff sturdiness. But his skill and talent didn’t disappear in the past month of these playoffs. They just got blocked out by the sun of human imperfection.
Duren called it “overthinking.” And as any sentient being knows, overthinking leads to paralysis. And paralysis is the enemy of decisiveness. Seconds of uncertainty can undermine years of repetition in the gym and decades of stacking all that muscle memory, which is why Duren began to look as if he’d never played basketball.
He agreed with that assessment. He saw it on film. For a game, anyway, he took the lesson to the court.
Yes, he knows he has to back up what he just did in the next “biggest game of the season,” or his Game 6 performance will get lost. He also knows he is still learning, and he believes in that process.
“My confidence never wavered,” he said, “I get my strength from the man above and the women who birthed me, so, that’s all I can say.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jalen Duren is ‘imposing his will,’ and Pistons’ chances rely on that
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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