The Gravity Report
THE 644
1 JOKIĆ 97.8 · 2 GILGEOUS-ALEXANDER 92.9 · 3 WEMBANYAMA 85.7 · 4 ANTETOKOUNMPO 83.9 · 5 DONČIĆ 83.0 · 6 LEONARD 77.3 · 7 CUNNINGHAM 70.3 · 8 TOWNS 69.3 · 9 MITCHELL 68.1 · 10 MAXEY 67.3 · 11 BALL 66.8 · 12 HOLMGREN 66.6 · 13 CURRY 66.5 · 14 DUREN 65.9 · 15 BARNES 65.8
Deep Dive №3 · Preseason 2026–27

The Last of His Kind

For ten seasons no player who refused to shoot threes was in the top ten, until Jalen Duren.
Francesco Freedman · The Gravity Report · the GRAVITY player-value model · published October 17, 2026 · 7-minute read
Independent analysis, not peer reviewed. v1, methodology and figures verified against public sources as of October 17, 2026. This article will be revised.
Format change, October 20, 2026: this Deep Dive is now a regular web article instead of a LaTeX PDF. Same text, numbers, tables and forecasts. The historical model is now called GRAVITY Historical everywhere (it was GRAVITY-RS). The original PDF stays available. Original PDF.
In short. Every other player in our top ten last season took at least 22% of his shots from three. Jalen Duren took none of them, and our per-minute rating still put him as the 7th best player in the league. That hasn't happened in over a decade. From 2015 to 2025, there wasn't a single player who never shot threes that finished in the top ten. Back in the 2004–05 season there were four of them, including the best player in the league. Today we look at how that kind of player has disappeared, how Duren is a top player without having a skill that is more important than ever in the modern game, and why we rank him 14th. Duren and the Pistons were in a four-month-long contract standoff, but now that it's finally over and he's getting paid $200 million over the next five years, we give it an 80% chance that he finishes top 15 next July.

The top ten, and the odd one out

Table 1. Our ten best players per minute in 2025–26 (GRAVITY Historical, 1,500+ minutes), with their impact rating and the share of shots they take from three.
PlayerImpactThree-point attempt rate
1Nikola Jokić+3.45.261
2Shai Gilgeous-Alexander+3.30.226
3Victor Wembanyama+2.82.324
4Luka Dončić+2.57.476
5Kawhi Leonard+2.17.354
6Cade Cunningham+1.71.308
7Jalen Duren+1.61.000
8Donovan Mitchell+1.48.439
9Tyrese Maxey+1.42.399
10LaMelo Ball+1.29.595

The list above is the modern NBA summarized. Even the two centers ranked above Duren shoot. Jokić takes a quarter of his shots from three, and Wembanyama takes a third. Duren's three-point attempt rate rounds to zero (he didn't take a single one).1

One note on the ranking itself. Table 1 uses GRAVITY Historical, our per-minute rating: the same formula behind Deep Dives No. 1 and No. 2, minus the on/off numbers we license from Cleaning the Glass, which only go back to 2003–04 and can't be published. Leaving that input out lets us run the exact same rating on every season since 1977–78 and line Duren's season up against Garnett's or Shaq's.2 It's also why this table can have Duren 7th while we rank him 14th overall: The 644 starts from this rating, adds the on/off input, blends in the season before, and charges or credits the playoffs.

Ten years without one

When the three-point line was first introduced in 1979, nearly every regular player ignored it. In 2014–15, about 29% of players with 1,500 minutes still took less than one in ten of their shots from three. As of last season that cohort has dropped to just 6% of the league.

The best players changed faster than the rest. Figure 1 shows the pure non-shooters (taking 2% or less of their shots from three) among every season's ten best players.

Non-shooters among each season's ten best players
Three-point rate under 10%Pure non-shooters (2% or less)
024681019801990200020102020Season endingPlayers in the top ten1980: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1981: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1982: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1983: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1984: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1985: 10 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1986: 8 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1987: 8 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1988: 8 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1989: 7 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1990: 6 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1991: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1992: 6 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1993: 4 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1994: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1995: 4 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1996: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1997: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1998: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1999: 6 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2000: 7 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2001: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2002: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2003: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2004: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2005: 5 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2006: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2007: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2008: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2009: 4 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2010: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2011: 2 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2012: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2013: 2 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2014: 2 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2015: 4 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2024: 3 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2025: 1 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate2026: 1 in the top ten under a 10% three-point rate1980: 5 pure non-shooters in the top ten1981: 9 pure non-shooters in the top ten1982: 7 pure non-shooters in the top ten1983: 8 pure non-shooters in the top ten1984: 6 pure non-shooters in the top ten1985: 5 pure non-shooters in the top ten1986: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten1987: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten1988: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten1989: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten1990: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten1991: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten1992: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten1993: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten1994: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten1995: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten1996: 1 pure non-shooters in the top ten1997: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten1998: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten1999: 6 pure non-shooters in the top ten2000: 5 pure non-shooters in the top ten2001: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten2002: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten2003: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2004: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2005: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten2006: 1 pure non-shooters in the top ten2007: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2008: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2009: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten2010: 3 pure non-shooters in the top ten2011: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2012: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2013: 1 pure non-shooters in the top ten2014: 2 pure non-shooters in the top ten2015: 4 pure non-shooters in the top ten2026: 1 pure non-shooters in the top ten
Figure 1. Non-shooters among each season's ten best players per minute, 1979–80 to 2025–26. The single blue bar all the way to the right is Duren.
Show the numbers
Season endingThree-point rate under 10%Pure non-shooters (2% or less)
1980105
1981109
1982107
1983108
1984106
1985105
198683
198783
198882
198974
199062
199153
199264
199344
199454
199543
199631
199732
199854
199966
200075
200153
200253
200332
200432
200554
200631
200732
200832
200944
201033
201122
201232
201321
201422
201544
201600
201700
201800
201900
202000
202100
202200
202300
202430
202510
202611

In 2004–05, four of the top ten were pure non-shooters: Kevin Garnett, who ranked first that year, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal, and a 22-year-old Amar'e Stoudemire. In 2014–15 there were still four of them: Anthony Davis, Duncan, Marc Gasol, and DeMarcus Cousins. The following season that count dropped to zero and stayed there for ten straight seasons. The larger group (players under a 10% rate) did see a return in 2023–24 and the next season after that through Giannis Antetokounmpo, Domantas Sabonis, and Anthony Davis. However, all three of them at least shoot a little. Duren doesn't shoot at all.

Duren's season also belongs on an interesting historical list. Since 1979–80, only eight seasons by players aged 22 or younger have been rated higher without shooting threes: Davis (again), Shaq twice, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Tracy McGrady, Zion Williamson, and Isiah Thomas.

How does he do it?

Table 2. Duren's season by component. Each value shown is a z-score against the league-average minute: zero is average and +1 is one standard deviation better.
BoxWinShVolumeEffic.CreationLoadStocksReboundRim
+1.63+2.79+1.43+2.60−0.59+0.18+0.38+2.57+2.26

A good jump shot is one way to be efficient, but Duren found others. His true shooting was .688 on a 23.6% usage rate, which comes out to 2.6 standard deviations above the league-average minute once you look at how much of the offensive burden landed on him. He grabbed 20.9% of available rebounds and drew a free-throw attempt for every two shots he took.3 All four of those parts of his game, efficiency, win shares, rebounding, and rim pressure, sit more than two standard deviations above average. The weak spot shows up in creation, where he comes in at below average. He doesn't run an offense, but he completes a very good one paired with Cade Cunningham, who ranks 6th on the same list.

Among the 164 players with over 1,500 minutes, Duren ranked the best in efficiency under load, third in win shares per 48 minutes, fourth in rim pressure, and fifth in rebounding. Another way to say this is that Duren's value is concentrated in the very few square feet the three-point revolution left for centers to work in, and nobody was more efficient than him there.

Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time, fills in some of the details. 72% of Duren's shots happened at the rim, which is more than 82% of bigs, and we already know none of them came from three. He scored 137.5 points per 100 shot attempts, placing him in the 93rd percentile, and he drew a shooting foul on 22.5% of his shots, which is in the 95th percentile. He also rebounded 14.1% of his teammates' missed shots. However, there was one job that the old center always had that we couldn't find in the case of Duren. His block rate of 1.5% puts him in the 49th percentile for bigs.8 He's an offense-first center.

Why we rank him 14th

We rank Duren 14th overall, seven places below his spot in Table 1, and the reason is almost entirely the playoffs. Duren's playoff BPM of −1.7 in 422 minutes against Cleveland and Orlando was 6.7 points lower than his regular season, and the model's playoff weighting hit the lowest it can go. That alone costs him 4.3 points of gravity score. Of all 229 players in The 644 who played in the postseason, he was the only one to hit that mark.4,5

His playoff numbers show exactly what fell apart. 70% of his shots still left his hands at the rim, but he only drew fouls on 11.8% of them, half of his regular-season rate, and his short mid-range shot percentage dropped to 22% compared to his regular 50%, a major decrease. To top it off, his points per 100 shot attempts came down from 137.5 to 110.0, the 26th percentile for playoff bigs.8 Excluding the playoffs, he would climb up to 8th in our rankings.

The rest of the gap is pretty small. The full model grades his regular season slightly lower, at +1.51 instead of +1.61, because it includes the on/off input and has slightly different skill weights.

We hear a lot of talk about how fans don't want to pay so much for a player who can't perform on the biggest stage. The poor end to last season has left a bad taste in the mouths of Pistons fans going into this offseason, and it has blinded them from seeing what a great player he really was all year long. It may also raise some concerns for the next playoff run, but that's a conversation for later. Duren will definitely help Detroit run a successful campaign in a competitive East.

The contract

When we first started writing this article, Duren was still unsigned, and we were a little unsure of his future. He had turned down a five-year, $200 million deal and skipped media day, and his qualifying offer of $9.6 million was set to expire on October 1st.6 He decided to take the long-term deal that same day, before the 11:59 p.m. deadline. ESPN reported that he had objected to weight clauses in Detroit's earlier offers.7 Even though he did miss media day and the first few practices of camp, Detroit fans can sleep at night knowing that their star center won't be sitting out games over a contract.

The forecast

Throughout history, young centers tend to stay good. Of the 22 seasons since 1977–78 from centers aged 21 to 23 with a comparable rating to Duren's, 18 of them were followed by a year that would keep Duren in the top 15. If he has an exact repeat of last season, his gravity score would rise to 71.1, which would rank him 7th.

Now that his contract issues have been resolved, we give it an 80% chance that he stays in the top 15. Injury would be the main risk that threatens this.

Our external prediction revolves around that traditional-center title. Since 1999–00, the best BPM among centers with a three-point attempt rate under 10% has gone to the same player in back-to-back seasons 11 out of 26 times. Duren led that group last year, and we give him a 60% chance to repeat, because Alperen Şengün took under 10% of his shots from three as recently as 2024–25 and could easily qualify for this again.

Jalen Duren ranks top 15 in The 644, July 2027 edition.
80%

#1–15 = Win · #16–20 = Near miss (graded as a miss) · #21 or below = Miss. This is our own ranking; we keep one bet on it each article so the model gets graded too.

Jalen Duren posts the highest 2026–27 BPM among players listed at center with a three-point attempt rate below 10% and 1,500+ regular-season minutes.
60%

Basketball Reference, final regular-season table.

External predictions are graded on Basketball Reference's final regular-season tables by April 30, 2027. Registered October 17, 2026, before the October 18 freeze. Scored by Brier score in the Forecast Ledger.

Method and sources

GRAVITY Historical (GRAVITY-RS in the code) per the specification's retrospective equation, 1977–78 to 2025–26; three-point attempt rate from Basketball Reference advanced tables. “Pure non-shooter”: three-point attempt rate of 2% or less. Code: papers/duren/ (extinct.py, analysis.py) and papers/common/ (gravity_rs.py, pipeline.py).

  1. Basketball Reference, 2025–26 advanced table. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2026_advanced.html
  2. Basketball Reference, league advanced and per-100 tables, 1977–78 to 2025–26. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/
  3. Basketball Reference, Jalen Duren. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/durenja01.html
  4. The Gravity Report, The GRAVITY Specification, v3. https://thegravityreport.com/notes/spec/
  5. The Gravity Report, The 644, July 2026 edition (CSV). https://thegravityreport.com/the644/the644-2026-07.csv
  6. ESPN, Duren not at media day amid contract standoff, September 28, 2026. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50051681/sources-pistons-duren-not-media-day-amid-contract-standoff
  7. ESPN, Duren accepts five-year, $200 million deal, October 1, 2026. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50081576/jalen-duren-accepts-5-year-200m-deal-pistons-agent-says
  8. Cleaning the Glass, Jalen Duren (garbage time filtered; percentiles by position), accessed September 29, 2026. https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/5102
The Forecast LedgerOriginal PDF (archived)

Cite this article

Freedman, F. (2026). "The Last of His Kind." The Gravity Report, GRAVITY Deep Dive No. 3.
https://thegravityreport.com/notes/duren/