(Editor’s note: As the 2022-23 season approaches, Pistons.com will examine the key storylines for the season ahead and beyond in the coming weeks. First up: How big of a jump can Cade Cunningham take in year two?)
Welcome to September. The sun’s going down an hour earlier than it did two months ago and before the calendar flips to October, hints of red and orange will tinge Michigan leaves. Oh, and also by that time, the Pistons will be knee deep into training camp.
It starts in less than four weeks, though voluntary team workouts will get rolling after Labor Day for pretty much all 30 NBA teams. For veteran teams with a clearly established hierarchy, training camp is mostly about determining the back end of the rotation and avoiding injury. For the Pistons – with 11 players 24 or younger and so many moving parts – there are legitimate questions on everything from a starting lineup to who fills out the 15-man roster.
The Pistons have a clear vision for the identity they hope to establish and that’s guided every move Troy Weaver has made in his two years on the job as general manager. Weaver likes long, athletic players – but loves competitive, selfless, tough players. That last part is also the best way to earn Dwane Casey’s trust and, ultimately, playing time.
Weaver and Casey being on the same page has helped the Pistons compress the timeline of Weaver’s restoration, entering year three with the core of a future contender emerging. How much progress the Pistons make toward that end in the 2022-23 season will be determined, to varying degrees, by a number of storylines that we’ll examine over the next few weeks ahead of the Sept. 26 start of camp.
That it starts with Cade Cunningham speaks to his place at the center of the franchise’s immediate future. The Pistons have amassed a number of promising young players – 11 of the 16 on standard contracts when camp opens are 24 or younger, five 21 or younger – in Weaver’s tenure but Cunningham, befitting of the loaded 2021 draft’s No. 1 pick, is the head of the snake.
He happens to fit the profile of the most coveted property in today’s NBA: a big, two-way, playmaking wing. The best players – the tippy top of the player pyramid – defy positional pigeon-holing. What, exactly, is LeBron James? What was Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan? Maybe James spent most of his career as a nominal small forward and Johnson most of his at point guard and Jordan most of his at shooting guard, but ultimately they were the player with the ball in his hands when it mattered most.
That’s Cunningham. He’s not exactly a point guard but he’s most definitely the guy who’ll have the ball in his hands when a Pistons game is on the line for the next decade and beyond.
And the results of his rookie season suggest that’s going to be a very intriguing time. Not since Grant Hill shared Rookie of the Year honors with fellow future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd in 1995 has a Pistons newcomer stirred such excitement.
Cunningham’s rookie season began under a dark cloud when he suffered a sprained ankle in the first week of training camp and was idled all of the preseason and the first four regular-season games. That he missed his first 18 3-point shots spoke to the challenge of getting dropped into the middle of a season – as your team’s lead playmaker, no less – without any chance to acclimate to the speed and context of the NBA game. Just as he began to find his footing, the Pistons lost leading scorer Jerami Grant for two months with a thumb injury, thrusting even more of the burden of carrying the offense on their heavily scrutinized rookie.
Tack on the fact the Pistons suffered from a lack of 3-point shooting, finishing 29th in the NBA in accuracy at .326, denying Cunningham the spacing required to fully exploit his playmaking genius. And despite all of that, every week he figured out another workaround to allow his progress to continue unimpeded.
Cunningham wound up finishing behind Scottie Barnes and Evan Mobley in the Rookie of the Year balloting, his ’21 draft classmates benefiting from joining teams that would make the playoffs to build big cushions that held off Cunningham’s closing rush. From the All-Star break on, here’s what Cunningham produced: 21.0 points, 5.8 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 34 minutes a game.
Project that out over a full season and it’s a good bet that the All-Star break in 2022-23 won’t be a break at all for Cunningham – because he should be an All-Star with numbers like those.
Whether that comes to pass, of course, likely depends on how the Pistons fare. Coaches, charged with filling out All-Star rosters after the starters are voted in, invariably reward players from winning teams and the Pistons would be well ahead of schedule if they were in playoff position at the time ballots are due.
Three areas to monitor with Cunningham this season to gauge how rapidly his learning curve is bending: 3-point percentage, turnover totals and free-throw attempts.
As brilliant as Cunningham was in the home stretch last season, his post All-Star numbers came despite 29 percent 3-point shooting. That is almost certainly going to improve. He’s an above-average shooter as his 40 percent mark from three at Oklahoma State attests.
The combination of greater familiarity and confidence in his second tour around the league plus growth from players around him – Saddiq Bey, Isaiah Livers, Isaiah Stewart, et al – will benefit Cunningham. So, too, should the explosive athleticism of rookies Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren – eventually – for differing reasons. Ivey’s attacking ability should give Cunningham some catch-and-shoot opportunities and Duren’s lob threat will give Cunningham the added option to exponentially complicate the challenge defenses will face against him in pick-and-roll chances. We saw glimpses late last season how the presence of Marvin Bagley III’s lob threat helped maximize Cunningham’s pick-and-roll arsenal. Duren could take that to another level with his otherworldly catch radius and athleticism.
Those same factors figure to put Cunningham at the foul line more frequently in year two. He averaged 2.6 free throws a game last season, a very low number for someone who took 21 percent of his shots within 3 feet of the rim. Cunningham’s free-throw rate as an Oklahoma State freshman was .388; it was .163, less than half, as an NBA rookie. Settling in at somewhere in the middle in his second NBA season would be a big leap forward.
Cunningham also comes to camp this season knowing his teammates look at him as their fulcrum. Kelly Olynyk, at 31 the elder statesman of a very young roster, offered a succinct analysis as the 2021-22 season concluded: “I know some vets here who will talk, but he’s the one who has to do it. That’s got to be his job. We’re here to support everybody and give our wisdom and two cents and we’ll speak when it needs to be spoken. This is Cade’s room. That’s what we need from him – as a point guard, as a leader, as the future of Detroit and the Pistons. That’s what he’s got to do and he wants to do it. The quicker he can get to that, the better.”
The way Cunningham finished the season suggests he’s already most of the way there. Troy Weaver’s restoration of the Pistons as an elite franchise is a project that requires a series of critical decisions to fall in line. But nothing will prove more important in that process than getting it right with the first No. 1 pick the Pistons exercised in 51 years. Cade Cunningham already has put minds at ease on that front. Now it’s just a matter of time and hitting on the complementary pieces.