The Plight of Cade Cunningham and the Cost of Spacing
The Pistons are bad and they might just get worse
The Detroit Pistons won 14 games last year. The Detroit Pistons also had a record-breaking 28-game losing streak this season. The Detroit Pistons were 29th in the league in 3-pointers made, 27th in 3-pointers shot, and 26th in 3-point percentage. With all those facts out of the way, I struggle to find a reason why a selection of Ron Holland for the Detroit Pistons makes sense. Without even getting into the ability to trade down and gain more assets they seemed to not take, I believe this selection is a disaster. I’ll start with this. I like Ron Holland. I don’t love Ron Holland, and I had him 10th on my big board, and I thought multiple landing spots inside the lottery made sense for Holland. The Pistons may have been the team I would be least excited to land Holland. But how did we get here?
Cade Cunningham is the best prospect at this moment on the Piston’s roster. The jumbo point guard was selected 1st overall in the 2021 draft and was a slam dunk for that pick. The Pistons were quite poor as are most teams who just had the number 1 pick, and won a measly 23 games. Cunningham finished 3rd in Rookie of the Year voting, with a sizable gap behind Scottie Barnes and Evan Mobley, who were both drafted to teams that went over .500. Cunningham’s rookie season was promising, becoming only the 5th player under 21 years old to put up 19/6/6, joining both LeBron James and Magic Johnson.
After this lackluster year, the Pistons were rewarded with the 5th pick, now fired GM Troy Weaver selected Jaden Ivey, a downhill presence at guard with questionable floor spacing. This was the first year I did my own scouting for the draft, and I loved Ivey’s game. I had him 4th on my personal big board, and I had him in the tier with Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero, and Jabari Smith Jr, who were all selected with the top 3 picks in the draft. Ivey had a bevy of comps predraft, with some ranging to a ceiling of Dwyane Wade, which I would’ve considered the 100th percentile outcome for the Purdue product. In reality, he was probably closer to De’Aaron Fox, as an incredibly explosive downhill scoring guard, who could develop into a quality playmaker and shooter in time. Ivey is legitimately one of those special downhill presences, and the ceiling for him is immense.
On draft night the Sacramento Kings went out of their way and selected Keegan Murray with the 4th pick, as they didn’t like the fit of Ivey next to the aforementioned Fox, and the Pistons had Ivey, who could’ve been the number one pick, sitting in their lap at 5. They took Ivey, who I considered a great fit for the Pistons, as his status as a walking paint touch could pair perfectly next to the more patient, mid-range operator of Cunningham. One of the two would likely have to turn into a more consistent shooter to be a championship-quality pairing, but it isn’t wild to assume this could still happen.
The Pistons then traded a 2023 1st (Nick Smith Jr. was later selected), and multiple seconds (Amari Bailey, Jaylen Clark, Cam Spencer, and Mouhamed Guey were selected) for Jalen Duren and the Kemba Walker contract. Duren was seen as a rim-running big man, with above-the-rim finishing and rim protection, with a similar profile to a big like DeAndre Jordan. Duren also has upside as a short roll playmaker, and I considered this to also be a good fit next to Cunningham.
After another poor season where the Pistons would win 17 games, partially due to an injury to Cunningham which limited him to 12 games, the Pistons selected Ausar Thompson with the 5th pick, a defensive-minded, playmaking wing with shooting concerns. This was the first pick where I questioned this pick for the Pistons. Duren and Ivey were prospects whom I both liked as secondary and tertiary options next to Cunningham, but Thompson had the most shooting questions out of maybe any player in the 2023 draft, with only his twin brother Amen potentially having a worse shooting profile. There were also players on the board who the Pistons could’ve traded back to get, or even selected at 5 who were knockdown shooters. Gradey Dick and Taylor Hendricks were both available, and even another project like Bilal Coulibaly has shown more shooting promise before and after the draft. That being said I still liked the value of Thompson at 5 and didn’t consider it a reach.
I hope you see the trend by now, and after this recording-breaking, atrocity of the season, in which they would only win 14 games, lose a record-breaking 28 games in a row, and finish last in the Eastern Conference and the NBA. Thomspon shot a measly 19%, Jaden Ivey continued to struggle with the poor spacing, Jalen Duren had some of the worst pick-and-roll awareness of any big man in the league, and Cunningham was left out there to die on the court amongst some of the worst spacing in the league. They made national headlines for being such a dreadful basketball team, and they were punished by the basketball gods by not just not winning the lottery but getting the 5th pick once again in the lottery. I hate that I have to write this but with this pick, the Detroit Pistons selected Ron Holland, a lane-pressuring wing with, you guessed it, a poor shooting profile.
How does all of this pertain to Cade Cunningham? The former first-team All-American is another player who has struggled with shooting, but his elite passing and ability to get inside the lane 1 on 1 should have good spacing around him to maximize his potential as a big initiator. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the OKC Thunder is another one of these bigger guards who isn’t a fabulous shooter, but who can get inside the lane and score in the mid-range and score. The Thunder have maximized his offensive potential by giving him elite floor spacing and continued to make strides to do so this offseason by trading away Josh Giddey.
In the first 48 hours of free agency, the Pistons did trade for Tim Hardaway shooter, a good albeit streaky sharpshooter who has been known to be the best shooter on the planet one week, and unable to hit water if he fell out of a boat that next, and Tobias Harris, a wing who can shoot the ball, but has a seemingly insatiable desire to take mid-range jump shots. Acquiring both these players is probably the best Detroit could do considering any player putting pen to paper is signing up for being on one of the worst teams in the league, so I will give new GM Trajan Langdon credit for that.
I hope for the sake of Cunningham the Pistons make more moves this offseason to acquire floor spacing, but what could those moves be? I for one would absolutely move a young piece for an older floor spacer, and I would look at moving Duren or Ausar. Many Piston fans ask for Ivey to be moved, and while I wouldn't totally be opposed to this, I would prefer to get off the abhorrent shooting of Ausar or the total lack of awareness in Duren. I am not some trade machine guru and I don’t know what this package could look like, but seeing the low cost a young floor spacer such as AJ Griffin went for, I would imagine a package featuring a similar player wouldn’t be very expensive.
For now, I can only speculate on these moves, and I hope I don’t have to see another year of Cunningham, who is likely to sign a max extension this offseason, rotting away amongst the worst shooting in the NBA.