{"id":796496,"date":"2026-07-26T19:21:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/796496\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T19:21:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:21:19","slug":"central-notes-essengue-mobley-duren-holland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/796496\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Notes: Essengue, Mobley, Duren, Holland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bulls selected Noa Essengue<\/a> with the 12th pick in the 2025 draft, but he has to prove himself to a new front office and new head coach Tiago Splitter, who don\u2019t have the same investment in the 19-year-old big man that the former regime did, Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a> writes in a subscriber-only piece.\u00a0Essengue only played two games last season before undergoing shoulder surgery, so he lost nearly a year of development time.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t make a strong impression at the Las Vegas Summer League, where Splitter briefly benched him in hopes of sending a message about the team\u2019s expectations. Sources tell Cowley that the new coaching staff wants Essengue to be \u201cless emotional and more tenacious\u201d in his approach to the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got to maybe bring a little more force in everything he does,\u201d Splitter said. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019re working on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cowley suggests that Essengue may start the upcoming season in the G League as he works to refine his skills and develop the intensity that he\u2019ll need to become an NBA regular. With a deep roster of frontcourt players, the Bulls likely won\u2019t have consistent minutes to devote to Essengue.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more from the Central Division:<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers\u2018 refusal to offer up Evan Mobley<\/a> in a potential trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> or Jaylen Brown<\/a> that could have made the team more attractive to LeBron James<\/a> has put the former Defensive Player of the Year in a difficult position, observes Joe Vardon of The Athletic<\/a>. Vardon states that if Mobley doesn\u2019t develop into an elite player soon, he\u2019ll wind up being blamed for the inability to make a franchise-changing move.
\nEven though negotiations with Jalen Duren<\/a> have dragged on for nearly a month, the Pistons haven\u2019t changed their minds about wanting to re-sign their starting center, Omari Sankofa II of The Detroit Free Press<\/a> states in a mailbag column (subscription required). Rival teams are limited to offers of four years and $177MM for the restricted free agent, and no one was willing to make that commitment to Duren before cap space started to run dry. That left him with little leverage in his talks with the Pistons, whose current offer is short of the 25% max of $239MM over five seasons. Duren\u2019s only alternative is to accept the team\u2019s $9.6MM qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent next summer, but that\u2019s a huge gamble that isn\u2019t guaranteed to recoup the money he would be giving up. Sankofa notes that no player has ever turned down the security of a near-max rookie extension.
\nThe Pistons remain committed to Ron Holland<\/a>, Sankofa adds, even though his poor outside shooting has made it tough to give him major minutes in his first two NBA seasons. Sankofa states that the team is hoping he can improve that area of his game, along with his court vision on drives to the basket, and emphasizes that he\u2019ll need to show improvement in year three to solidify himself as part of the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bulls selected Noa Essengue with the 12th pick in the 2025 draft, but he has to prove…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,576,912,2282,9002],"class_list":["post-796496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-evan-mobley","tag-jalen-duren","tag-noa-essengue","tag-ron-holland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116987906206069130","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}