Cade Cunningham doesn’t wish to spend any more nights inside Little Caesars Arena in street clothes – unless he’s at a summertime concert after a long day honing his craft up Woodward Avenue at the Henry Ford Pistons Performance Center – but he used the many nights of forced down time over the winter to learn as much as he could.
About himself. About the NBA. About his teammates. And about the Pistons fan base.
“We go to all these other arenas and it’s not the same feel as LCA,” Cunningham said, reflecting on his injury-curtailed second NBA season. “I’m just blessed and super proud of the fact I was drafted here, this team I get to play for and to have a fan base like that. They deserve to have a winning team and I’m excited to be part of the group that’s going to make that happen for them.”
There are many reasons for optimism that the turnaround will be launched in earnest for the 2023-24 season, including a guaranteed top-five draft pick, somewhere around $30 million in cap space and a summer’s progress for young players like outstanding rookies Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren. But make no mistake: The biggest reason for the optimism emanating out of Pistons HQ is the presence of Cade Cunningham.
Here's a look at Cunningham’s past, present and future:
PROFILE: 6-foot-7 guard, 21 years old, 2 NBA seasons
2022-23 STATS: 19.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 6.0 assists on 41.5 shooting and 27.9 3-point shooting in 33 minutes a game over 12 games before sitting with a shin injury he would eventually decide to address by undergoing season-ending surgery.
STATUS: Cunningham, the No. 1 pick of the 2021 NBA draft, is entering the third year of his rookie contract and is under Pistons control through the 2024-25 season at minimum.
DID YOU KNOW?: Cunningham’s Montverde (Fla.) Academy high school team included four players who would go on to be first-round picks in the 2021 NBA draft – Cunningham (No. 1, Pistons), Scottie Barnes (No. 4, Toronto), Moses Moody (No. 12, Golden State) and Day’Ron Sharpe (No. 29, Brooklyn).
A LOOK BACK: Cunningham played his first two years of high school basketball in his hometown of Arlington, Texas, before transferring to national powerhouse Montverde for his final two seasons. He starred on the gold-medal winning USA Basketball team at the 2019 U19 World Cup to establish himself as the front-runner of his draft class, won the 2020 Naismith Award as the nation’s outstanding high school player and followed up with a tremendous freshman season at Oklahoma State in 2020-21. Cunningham was a first-team All-America selection and joined Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley and Marcus Smart as the only freshman to win Big 12 Player of the Year. After missing a month with a training camp injury following his selection at No. 1 overall by the Pistons, Cunningham’s rookie season began slowly but finished with a flourish. He averaged 17.4 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.6 assists to win a spot on the All-Rookie team.
THE SEASON THAT WAS: Cunningham was poised to have a big second season after gaining strength and absorbing rookie lessons in the way someone with his renowned basketball IQ would. Over a four-game stretch just prior to the news that Cunningham would be shut down for evaluation with a shin injury, he averaged 27.8 points, 8.8 rebounds and 8.5 assists. In his last game, though, something was clearly off as Cunningham struggled, scoring four points on 1 of 11 shooting with three rebounds and two assists in 24 minutes of a loss at Boston. Cunningham hoped that rest would address the injury, diagnosed as a stress fracture, but in the days that ensued he consulted both medical experts and players who’d been down the path with similar injuries and – a month after the injury was revealed – made the decision to have surgery. It was immediately deemed to have been a successful operation and Cunningham in January said he was relieved to be confident that he would return at full strength. The timetable for recovery, roughly four months, meant Cunningham would be sidelined for the remainder of the season but on track to be cleared for full activity in time to allow for a fully engaged off-season.
A LOOK AHEAD: Cunningham used idle time to his benefit, bulking up noticeably in the upper and lower halves and working on his 3-point shot, which he said got flatter as he transitioned to the NBA arc. While Cunningham almost certainly will remain at the focus of the offensive scheme implemented by Dwane Casey’s successor, the emergence of rookie Jaden Ivey will lend greater flexibility to the offense and allow Cunningham to spend possessions off the ball to exploit matchups. The presence of veteran wing Bojan Bogdanovic, an elite 3-point shooter, will give the Pistons two high IQ offensive weapons and each will make the other more dangerous. The innate sense of timing, spacing and angles Cunningham exhibited as a rookie figure to optimize the ability of a new coaching staff to discern the best ways to utilize the four young big men – Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren, Marvin Bagley III and James Wiseman – in two-big lineups with Cunningham, Bogdanovic and Ivey as the principals around them. Cunningham’s presence even during his rehabilitation from his shin injury solidified his status as the leader of a very young locker room eager to grow together.
MONEY QUOTE: “I learned more about my teammates than anything. Being able to watch them through so many games and remove myself from actually being on the court and locking in on what the defense is doing and having so much time to sit back and watch, I’ve learned a lot about my team. That’ll help me in the future, for sure.” – Cade Cunningham on how he made the best of his idle time