The Detroit Pistons are Relying on Cade Cunningham, Perhaps too Much

As Detroit Pistons GM Troy Weaver sat at the podium amongst a room full of media members on Monday, he stated a desire for this team to do something that they haven’t been able to do once throughout his time as the team’s general manager - play meaningful basketball. 

"The realistic goal for our team is to play 82 meaningful games,” said Weaver at the Pistons Media Day event. “We want to play for something, not look at the last 25 games not in contention."

It’s a significant goal for a team that’s been eliminated from playoff contention in early March each of the last two seasons. 

But it’s difficult to believe this upcoming season will be any different following the offseason Detroit had. 

Fans were hoping for the Pistons to extend a hefty contract offer to restricted free agent, Cameron Johnson, or bring back former Pistons forward Jerami Grant. Instead, the Pistons used the bulk of 30+ million in cap space trading for Joe Harris from the Brooklyn Nets - thus providing Brooklyn with enough cap space to bring back Cam Johnson - and Monte Morris via the Washington Wizards. 

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Prior to these trades, after failing in the NBA Draft Lottery to the 5th pick, the Pistons drafted Ausar Thompson and moved back into the late first round to select Marcus Sasser - a combo guard from Houston.

Morris is an excellent backup point guard, and a great veteran to add to a young group of guards. Thompson is an exciting young prospect and should bring a mix of athleticism and defensive chops that Detroit was sorely missing at the wing spot last year. 

It’s unclear if Harris or Sasser will earn a spot in new head coach Monty Williams’ rotation by the time the season begins in a few weeks. 

So after a rather quiet offseason, how do the Pistons plan to go from winning 17 games to competing for a Play-In Tournament spot?

The answer - according to the Pistons - is the return of Cade Cunningham, who played just 11 games last season before having to be shut down and undergo surgery on his left shin. 

“He’s the lynchpin of what we’re doing,” Weaver professed on Monday. 

The words are no surprise. 

Cunningham was selected by Weaver with the 1st pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. Weaver determined he’d be the key component to the organization’s restoration years ago. 

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And three years later, even after missing nearly his entire sophomore season, Cunningham is this franchise’s best chance at finding relevance. 

Cunningham was offered the opportunity to be a part of Team USA’s FIBA World Cup team this summer, but opted to join the USA Select Team to train with and play against USA’s FIBA team for a week before returning to his offseason training regime, rather than traveling across the globe for three more weeks. 

During that week, he dominated the training camp, his performance explaining why he was recruited by Team USA to join them in the World Cup in the first place. USA’s head coach, Steve Kerr, was impressed by Cunningham: 

“Cade looked great,” exclaimed Kerr. “The injury is clearly behind him. It's just great to see him healthy, and he's a guy who can really control a game from that point guard spot with his size and physicality, and it's good to see him looking so healthy."

Tim Bontemps of ESPN recounted Cunningham’s performance shortly afterward: 

“They had him in a Luka Doncic-type role on Friday during the scrimmages. The Select Team is basically here to mimic what the opposition is going to do during the tournament. Cade Cunnigham is essentially the same size as Luka. They had him playing the same way. And he was tearing Team USA apart.”

To Pistons fans who endured the second-worst season in franchise history last year, these words sang as music to their ears. 

But if Cunningham is not only healthy, but ready to take a step forward in his development, it’s fair to question if the Pistons should have done more this summer to improve the roster around him. 

It’s unclear how the remainder of the starting lineup will shake out around Cunningham, but no matter what configuration Williams lands on, it will come with significant flaws that will hinder the team’s success. 

It stands to reason that the Pistons will land on one of two starting lineup iterations:

Option 1: Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Bojan Bogdanovic, Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren

Option 2: Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Ausar Thompson, Bojan Bogdanovic, Jalen Duren

The first lineup, with Bogdanovic, Stewart, and Duren alongside Cunningham and Ivey is what I would imagine to be the most likely starting lineup trotted out on opening night. Weaver and Williams have been adamant that the team intends to use double big lineups. Detroit committed long-term to Isaiah Stewart this offseason when they inked him to a four-year, $64 million contract extension. However, the biggest concerns with this lineup start with the newly extended big. 

Defensively, the numbers didn’t back the pairing of Stewart and Duren being as effective as some imagined they would have been last season. The two shared a defensive rating of 120.7 when on the court together last year. 

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Offensively, the idea of this lineup having enough spacing is purely theoretical and cannot be backed up statistically. The average 3-point shooting percentage in the NBA last season was 35.3%. This lineup grouping would put just one player on the court that was at or above this percentage (Bogdanovic) with the rest falling under in most cases by numerous percentage points. 

The second lineup has its own issues on both sides of the floor as well. 

Bogdanovic had a defensive rating of 119 when playing the power forward position last season. While the lineup’s perimeter defense would likely improve with Thompson entering the lineup, it’s not a guarantee that the overall defense of this lineup would improve so much so that it’s worth the issues that this lineup would likely deal with on offense. 

Thompson shot 30% from beyond the arc and only 67.1% from the free throw line with Overtime Elite last year. The spacing in this lineup would be even worse than the spacing in the first group. 

To get back to Cunningham, no matter how good he plays this upcoming season, it’s unlikely that the right supporting cast is around him to allow the team to be good enough to fight for a playoff spot in April. 

This issue also exposes a question that the Pistons may have to ask themselves if they do indeed find themselves out of the playoff race shortly after the all-star break.

Is the core Troy Weaver has spent the past four years building good enough to become a playoff team?

Cunningham could end up being as good as Luka Doncic, but he could be destined for the same struggles that the Slovenian superstar has faced throughout his career - an insufficient supporting cast limiting his ability to win games. 

There’s a world in which Cunningham, Ivey, and Stewart all take leaps as outside shooters, alleviating many of the team’s spacing concerns.

A world in which Duren cements himself as a dominant defensive presence in the interior exists, too. But these are significant hopes, and it’s likely all of these hopes would need to come to fruition for Detroit to win basketball games.

The Pistons do still have an open roster spot, but there’s not an available name at the moment that’s big enough to change the trajectory of this roster.

Would we be having this conversation if Detroit won the lottery, drafted Victor Wembenyama, and plucked Cameron Johnson from the Nets? Probably not. 

But the big move that was once hoped for never came and on paper Detroit’s roster appears seriously flawed. 

Perhaps under Monty Williams significant changes occur and the roster develops at a significantly faster rate than it was under Dwane Casey, but for now, that remains to be seen. 

The Pistons may have the cornerstone of its franchise in Cade Cunningham, but this season will be telling in determining if Detroit has assembled the right pieces around him to elevate the franchise out of the gutters of the league. 

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