With the bulk of the NBA offseason in the rearview, Jalen Duren remains the only All-NBA selection from last season not currently under contract.Discussions between Duren and the Detroit Pistons have yet to result in a new deal for the 22-year-old, long-term or otherwise. Last offseason, the big man and Detroit were unable to agree on a rookie-scale extension. One year, a career-best regular season and an underwhelming playoff run later, Duren and the Pistons are still at odds on his worth.Who better to help dissect the impasse than someone who was actively involved in NBA front-office negotiations for a living? Here’s a discussion with our John Hollinger to better understand Duren’s talks with the Pistons, why the two sides seem to be apart, how his contract negotiations could affect Ausar Thompson’s rookie-scale extension and more.Hollinger spent nearly a decade in the Memphis Grizzlies’ front office as the vice president of basketball operations from 2012 to 2019. Here’s our conversation:Given your experience in negotiations and how long Duren’s have gone on, how do you ultimately see his restricted free agency concluding?Hollinger: We’ve all seen this restricted free-agency movie so many times, and it almost always ends the same way: After a drawn-out stalemate for most of the summer, cooler heads prevail, and the two sides eventually work out a multi-year deal to stay put. I think it’s going to end the same way with Duren and the Pistons; both sides have strong incentive to get a deal done, and the only question is the price tag.There is no plausible outcome that results in Duren signing an offer sheet with another team because there is no cap space left, and any sign-and-trade scenario Detroit would agree to seems highly unlikely.From Duren’s side, he has a chance to sign a nine-figure deal for life-changing money, and his only other realistic alternative is to re-up for the qualifying offer of just $9.6 million and try again next year. Realistically, this is by far Duren’s best option, even if the final number isn’t the supermax he might have hoped for in the spring.Why Jalen Duren is still a free agentHunter Patterson and Jeshua KiddWhat are some intricacies of these negotiations fans might not be aware of, and how could they extend discussions?Hollinger: One thing that has really changed is that incentives can’t be used to bridge the gap between the two sides anymore.Teams have been extremely reluctant to put incentives in new contracts because they now count against the tax aprons, regardless of whether the player achieves them. Since incentives can count for up to 15 percent of the contract value, it used to be team and player could paper over a relatively small difference by including a win-win scenario where the player achieved an incentive that helped the team win.