Cade Cunningham Envisioned His NBA Stardom Years Before It Happened

One of the more overlooked superstars of the NBA in recent years has been Cade Cunningham, someone who’s silently become one of the most consistently good players in the league. Today, he’s where he always wanted to be since he was small. But did he always think he’d be a baller in the best basketball league in the world? No, his dreams, in a way, were bigger.

Cunningham, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, spoke about his early basketball days and revealed that he was just four years old when he started playing the sport. “I wish refs still treated me that way,” he humorously stated when Fallon showed him a picture of a ref tying his shoes as a child. But the reason the host showed Cunningham the picture was actually different. It was to remind him that his first-ever ‘dream’ wasn’t to be an NBA player.

Cunningham wanted to make a lot of money. That’s what he wrote in his second-grade yearbook, at least, which, when Fallon presented, drew in cheers from the audience present at its taping.

“I know in yearbooks they ask kids what they wanna be when they grow up, and in your yearbook, we got a couple of pictures of you as a kid, and this one says, Cade Cunningham, billionaire,” Fallon said. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s a kid. I love this kid.” 

That said, Cunningham’s real financial dreams began a year before he got to second grade. “My first grade, I put millionaire, and then I was like, ‘Let’s go bigger than that.” 

It wasn’t until the fourth grade that Cunningham actually declared his ambition of playing in the NBA. He went on to become one of the best young ballers in the country, spending a year at Oklahoma State, where he was deemed a five-star recruit and the No. 1 prospect of his class. He averaged 21 points, 6 rebounds, and 3.5 assists per game in the Sooner State before declaring for the 2021 NBA Draft.

When Fallon showed him his grade four yearbook, Cunningham said, “I just loved the game then. I like multiple sports, but I just love basketball. Basketball was different.” 

Unsurprisingly, Cunningham was the No. 1 pick, selected by the Detroit Pistons — a team he has started carrying back to relevance by leading them to the playoffs in 2025, including their first postseason win since 2008. 

Out of the three “dreams” Cunningham listed as a child, two of them have been achieved. He’s in the NBA (where he’s already been to an All-Star game) and is also a millionaire, having signed a four-year rookie deal worth $45 million.

Next stop, the land of billionaires. Can he go three out of three?