There are 15 teams in the Eastern Conference. Of those 15, five of them are already dreaming of next year, lacking the talent (Nets, Hornets, Wizards) or functional Achilles tendons (Celtics, Pacers) to compete this season. Of the remaining ten, the Magic, Bulls, Hawks, Bucks, Raptors and Sixers aren’t true threats, on account of being the Magic, Bulls, Hawks, Bucks, Raptors and Sixers. Of the remaining three, the Knicks can’t square their best offensive lineups with their best defensive ones and the Cavs, fundamentally, don’t have the juice. Of the remaining one, the Pistons are 17-5, winners of 15 of their last 18 games.
If the Pistons are the best team in the East, Cade Cunningham might very well be its best player. The first pick in the 2021 draft, Cunningham has taken a long, logical road, evolving from a bad player on a bad team, to a good player on a bad team, to a good player on a good team.
Now a great player on a great team, Cunningham is perhaps the NBA's most complete guard. He’s a better scorer than anyone who’s a better defender, a better defender than anyone who’s a better scorer, a better passer than just about anyone. If other top guards like Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic min-maxxed their way to stardom, Cunningham has a more comprehensive vision of the game.
Whereas Cunningham was plagued by a limiting pragmatism early in his career, he’s gradually realized that the best shot the Pistons can find on any given possession is the one that he creates. Through a quarter of the season, he’s either scored or assisted on 940 points, well more than half of the 1,751 points that the Pistons have put up with him on the floor; despite missing three games, he’s made more unassisted three-pointers than every other Piston combined. Every team has a primary ball handler, but Cunningham is more or less Detroit’s solitary one.
But what makes Cunningham so great isn’t just his familiarity with the pebbled, shopworn leather of a Spalding; it’s that he’s averaging 28.2 points and 9.3 assists per game. And he’s not even playing particularly well! Although he’s putting up the best stats of his career, he’s still leaving meat on the bone. On wide open threes, he’s shooting 14.6 percent, down from 36.8 percent last year; he’s made just 40.8 percent of driving layups. Similarly, his teammates’ effective field goal percentage on potential assists is down five percentage points from last year, even while Cunningham has dished out more assists at the rim than any other guard. The results have been good; the process has been even better.
In fact, it’s this process that defines Cunningham. If basketball is often classified as an invasion sport, Cunningham has the size and strength to turn it into an occupation one. With the ball in his hands, he maneuvers his way to the meatiest parts of the court and makes himself comfortable, kicking his feet up even as flailing defenders try to dislodge him. To paraphrase a great writer, Cunningham is the river and the middle of the paint is his canyon; he flows through it, its open mouth awaiting his harvest.
As such, Cunningham has mastered the same kind of slow-burn playmaking that’s usually reserved for lumpen European geniuses like Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic. From the middle of the floor, Cunningham commands the total attention of all five defenders. As one of the NBA’s most prolific drivers, he engages the low man, who’s responsible for helping at the rim. As both a first-class lob thrower and crosscourt dimer, he challenges wing defenders to make second-order rotations along the weakside—and as a supremely crafty mid-range scorer, he necessitates aggressive gap help, which then makes those second-order rotations impossible.
Since Cunningham destabilizes defenses on his own, the Pistons can plug just about any combination of players around him. Springy non-shooters (Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland, Jaden Ivey) can jet through the gaps that Cunningham creates; beefed-up frontcourt pairings of Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart work because Cunningham has the patience and know-how to navigate cramped quarters. He makes his teammates better by allowing them to be the best version of themselves.
Although Cunningham always had a singular offensive approach, he couldn’t become an elite offensive force until he became a more conventional one. After falling victim in the playoffs to Brunson’s highly-optimized shot diet, Cunningham is now firing off-the-dribble threes and finagling free throws at a career-high rate.
Compared to last season, Cunningham’s True Shooting and assist rate are roughly unchanged. And yet his offensive “impact” has skyrocketed; his EPM (estimated offensive plus-minus) has jumped from +2.5 to +3.1, his RAPM (regularized-adjusted plus-minus) from +0.1 to +2.1, his DARKO (who can say?) has nearly doubled. He’s improved not because he’s making more shots—or even helping his teammates make more shots—but because he’s taking more of the right kinds of shots.
Broadly, it’s difficult to be an effective hooper while remaining an ethical one. The wide-open nature of contemporary offense has allowed stars to experiment with kinds of passes and shots that were previously unimaginable, but only so far as they conform to the cruel dictates of efficiency. If the league’s best players all have their own poetic flourishes, they share the prosaic understanding that a bucket by any other name would smell as sweet. You can do anything you want, as long as that “anything” produces at least 1.15 points per possession.
In this sense, Cunningham is proof positive of the ways that the NBA both rewards and punishes uniqueness. He has a Nike signature shoe line in the works because he manipulates defenses with his distinctive pace. He’s the pilot of a title contender because he’s finally acceded to playing the way that title contention demands. By learning to play like everyone else, he’s become one of a kind.
